Why You Should Stop Listening to Get-Rich-Quick “Gurus”

Why haven't you finished the thing you've been trying to do for the last five years? Trying to get fit, trying to start a business, trying to get your finances in order? Is it because you're lazy? I don't think so. Is it because you're stupid? I don't think so. The reason is probably a lot deeper than that. Many of us have been tricked into the get Rich Quick mindset by following advice from sh heads like Andrew Tate. There is an entire industry that meant to convince you that you can become rich or fit overnight. And the people peddling these lies are using techniques you're not even aware of. In this video, I'm going to show you the surprising ways that Get Rich Quick gurus prey on you. And then I'm going to show you how successful people actually think. Real successful people, so you can build true wealth. Let's dive right in with part one the the Language of Get Rich Quick Schemes. Now, I've been in business for 20 years. I have a Netflix show called how to Get Rich. I have a New York Times best selling book as we are recording. It's on the bestseller list right now. I'm telling you this because in the past two decades I have seen countless Get Rich Quick schemes come and go. In fact, I'm so obsessed with this topic that I created a Google document to track Get Rich Quick fads and I invited others to contribute to it as well. I'll link it for you down in the description. There are very specific words that are tip offs to people who are peddling a get Rich quick scheme. Now sure, they may camouflage it with a beautiful website and nice photos, but they always use the same language. Let me show you what they say. First. A good sign someone is a scammer is to observe the way they talk about wealth. Many times they will take videos of themselves on boats, stand next to sports cars, they'll have expensive watches, take pictures on private jets, often objectify women. They rely on social proof in many ways. They want to create an image of what somebody without money would think somebody with money does. Trust me, I know a lot of wealthy people and they do not routinely post photos of themselves on the boat. So cool. Look at me in my boat, two bikinis behind. They might be on a boat. They might even own a boat. More importantly, these same people promise huge returns for minimal effort. They really try to convince you that with a fourth grade education and knowing what they don't want you to know, you can somehow make millions and millions of dollars compared to Everybody else. And you don't even need to take all the time that those suckers are putting in. Listen, education matters. Maybe formal, maybe informal. Time matters and luck matters. But these folks don't talk about nuance. They simply tell you, if you buy this thing, you will make $10 million. Next. They brag about how little they work. I once went to a conference. It was an Internet marketer conference, and I regret going to it. I was there with a colleague of mine, and as we walked in the door, I said, watch how everybody introduces themselves. They're going to talk about how much money they make and how little they work. He said, there's no way. We sat down at a table, everybody's introducing themselves. And almost to a person, they went around the table like this. My name is blank. I write speeches for pastors. I only work 25 hours a week, and I make about $600,000 a year. I was like, you're going to hell for sure. You can tell someone is probably a scammer when they define their value by those two metrics. How much money they make and how little they work. Can I tell you something? You wealthy people like to work. They like it. Now, of course, they want to orchestrate a business so that they can have time with their family and travel and do the things they love. Yes. But they don't see work as oppositional. They don't see it as punishment. People who are scammers internalize that. They hate work. So everything they talk about is designed to get you to work less. Do you understand what a powerful red flag that is? The same people will always insult others working nine to five jobs. People who are peddling get rich quick schemes will always demean others working a 9 to 5. Have you ever noticed they even have phrases, I would Never work a 9 to 5. Those suckers are trapped in the middle class. Well, there's nothing wrong with being in the middle class and going to a job, getting paid well, getting respected, getting a 401k, getting to build major equity in the American stock market does not mean you're trapped. It means you chose to have a job. And if you want to switch, you could switch your job. I want to point out another thing. How can you expect somebody to grow their own business if they have publicly demeaned everyone working a 9 to 5 job? Do you know that I employ lots of people working nine to five full time with benefits, contractors? I've employed hundreds of people over the course of my business. I work. Do you think I could get top Talent. If I was out there saying nine to five people are losers, they are trapped in a cage of their own making. No, I talk about how there are lots of ways to live a rich life. You can start a business, you can negotiate your salary, you can work with people who respect and challenge you. Along with talking down people working a 9 to 5 job, you will often find get rich quick schemers criticizing college education. Now, this is for an obvious reason. Many of them do not have a college degree. Waking up and going to school for four years was too much for them. Them, they couldn't follow through. That's often why they do not follow through on their own businesses. Then they jump from one idea to another. Now, some people should go to college, some people should not. But I don't think it's a good idea to go around criticizing something that tens of millions of Americans do, which actually generally provides them more money, better outcomes, and then to talk it down saying, you don't need a college education, you just need to buy my course. Maybe, probably not. Now, these get rich quick schemers are only living for the day. They are running episodic campaigns, meaning it's one campaign after another, one promo after another. They're talking about overnight results. Do you ever hear them talking about excellence or long term thinking or building assets? No. In fact, you see this in the topics they choose. I have scammers who have personally plagiarized my material. They've jumped from fitness to crypto to AI to being a LinkedIn influencer and on and on and on. And my experience in the early days when people were plagiarizing me a lot was that they would copy my stuff, they would try to change a little bit of it, but they were lazy, they wouldn't do much and I got really mad. I would pursue them legally. I often made public examples out of them. And I'm glad I did because the market learned, don't mess with my stuff. I'm coming after you. I have a legal team and we will pursue you. But there was something I didn't realize early on. I've followed a lot of those same people, the scammers who unscrupulously plagiarized my business's material. And guess what happened? Almost all of them self destructed. It's hard enough to run a business and stay in business, stay in touch with your customers, manage finance, create new products, that's hard enough. But to do that when you're just copying somebody else, the minute it gets harder, they give up. And so My lesson there is you do not want to even get in the neighborhood of being a get Rich quick follower because it pollutes your mind and you will never be able to follow through on anything. They can't even follow through on making money. The one thing they talk about. They can't follow through on anything else. Couple of other clues in terms of get rich quick schemers. They rarely live in major cities. You rarely see them living in Manhattan. You rarely see them living in Los Angeles or San Francisco. Why? Because it costs a lot of money to live in those places. And many of these scammers have highly variable income. They'll make $60,000 from a launch, but they spent $58,500 on Facebook ads. They don't actually have a lot of money and so they move to Florida. Florida or Puerto Rico. Couple of reasons. One, much lower cost of living. Second, the very same get rich quick mindset is highly motivated by avoiding taxes. Do you start to see how it all works together? Again, I'm not saying everyone who lives in Florida is a scammer, but a lot of scammers sure live in Florida. Finally, get rich Quick scammers do not care about their reputation. Now I have people on my list who are New York Times money reporters, my professors from Stanford, my parents, my friends. I care about my reputation. I've been in business for 20 years. I'm not going to screw anybody over. I want to help you, and I will bend over backwards to help my customers. However, if you don't think long term, if you're simply concerned with the next campaign, if you have made it your identity to brag about how much money you make, then you're not thinking about reputation. You're thinking about how am I going to make the next 40 grand and I'm going to do whatever it takes. And as your reality becomes increasingly detached from what you claim you've achieved, you will become more and more desperate. That is why you see people making bigger and bigger claims, more and more unlikely claims, because they've been talking about how much money they make and how many boats they have for two, three, four years. Meanwhile, they're eating ramen noodles, they can't afford rent, and so they need to go all in. It's a bad place to be and I don't want you to get to a place where your back is against the wall. Listen, this is not how successful people think. In the next part of the video, I'm going to share how actual successful people think and how they move up in the world. All right now part two. The mindset of Truly Successful people. Now I can tell you that I know what it takes to be successful. I myself was not born into privilege. I had a lot of luck. That helped me. I was the son of immigrants in a middle class family. I went to a public school. Over time I grew my income. I invested 10 to 20% every year since I was a teenager. But I still enjoy eating tacos on the back of my car and I love staying at the world's best hotels. So how do I do it? The truth is my investments now earn more than my income and that comes from a couple of places. When I had a job, I was taking my income and investing it aggressively. As my business grew, I was doing the exact same thing. Taking my money, investing it aggressively. Now of course I run campaigns. I have multiple programs in my business. But you know what people don't talk about? I got laid off from my own company at one point. I have a full time team. I pay millions in taxes over the course of many years. And I've also had years where I've lost millions of dollars. Now there are ups and downs, but one thing that is less frequently talked about is your mindset. People love to talk about your freaking bots, your chat bots and your AI tools. But why are they not talking about what does it take to get up tomorrow morning and show up in your business? We're going to stop it with this get rich quick bull and we're going to talk about things that actually matter. I'm going to share some of my lessons as well as the lessons of my friends, millionaires, CEOs, folks that I've known over a long period of time. People that I really respect. First, getting the basics right. You can't be performing at a top level. When you wake up bleary eyed and you feel like I'm just going to be straight with you. If you struggle to get out of bed in the morning, it's going to be very tough to be performing at a top level. So the getting the basics right mean getting your sleep right. Probably means going to sleep earlier. Probably means not looking at TikTok as I did last night until 12:30am Decide what you want to do. Just fix your sleep. Next, being humble, I got humbled a few years ago. I got invited to pitch a TED Talk to the person who chooses them. You know those TED Talks, millions of views, et cetera. At the time, my business was going way up. I sort of walked into that meeting. I hadn't really prepared. I, I thought about what I was going to say on the taxi ride over. I sit down and the person goes, what do you got? And I gave them the first idea. And I could see in their eyes I'd lost them. They were not interested. And their response confirmed it because they said, what else? And I was like. And I just made something up on the spot. It was very clear. Walking out of that meeting, I bombed. I did not get a TED Talk. I've never done a TED Talk. And, and that was my fault. I walked out of there humbled. And I realized, ramit, you ain't. You better recenter yourself and refocus yourself. And I got back to basics. That means when I go into a meeting, I'm prepared, I have an agenda. If it's somebody I'm meeting for the first time, I've done research on who they are. It is important to be constantly humbled. Now I could have taken that meeting and been like, oh my God, what an asshole. No, they weren't the asshole. I was. I didn't prepare. I had my shot and I blew it. And I've never had a TED Talk since. That is how successful people operate. Well, not blowing the meeting, they don't blow the meeting. Usually when bad things happen, they listen, they take the clues of the world. They go, oh, maybe that person wasn't the nicest, but what was my role in that failure? And they try to improve just a little bit every single day. Successful people have have a support system. Years ago we ran a fitness program in my business. We hired a full time trainer and we had people come into this program who wanted to either lose weight or gain muscle. So they started and they would come every week and they would be surrounded by supportive people, including me, the trainer, other students, and then they would go back to their normal life. And usually their husband would say something after a couple weeks that went like this. When are you going to start eating normally again? When are you going to eat with us and be a good mom? Can you imagine? You've wanted to change your body for years. You finally got the courage to join a program. You're actually making changes. You're starting to realize how calories work. And then your partner, husband or wife says, when are you going to come back and be a member of this family? It's devastating. And many of those people dropped out because you can have the perfect information, you can have the perfect coach, but if you do not have a support system, you're in real trouble. Successful people have A support system that could be their partner, that could be their mom or dad, that could be their peer. They have a support system. And this is important when you are starting something new, it's going to be scary. When I started my business right out of college, I remember friends saying, when are you going to get a real job? And that hurt deeper than anything else somebody could have said because I didn't know if my business at the time was actually good. I wasn't making much money. So I was like, I don't know myself. But I sure wish those same people had said, hey, you're going to do awesome. Maybe it's this business, maybe it's something else, but I believe in you. That is what a valuable support system looks like. And that's not talked about enough. Successful people are coachable. Oftentimes I see people obsessing over the the perfect book. Is this the perfect book? Is money for couples the perfect book? Yes, it's the perfect book. Get this book. But they obsess over the perfect program, the perfect book, the perfect app. They don't stop to say, am I coachable? In other words, focus less on finding the perfect instructor and focus more on being coachable yourself. That means when you show up, you're rested, you have money, meaning you're not going into your last $5 going into debt to sign up for something. Don't do that. You're going to stress yourself out. It means that you are ready to learn and you are willing to put yourself in your instructor's hands. When I join programs where I have a coach, they'll ask me, what's your goal? And I come, I have a written goal. I tell them exactly what I want to achieve. And then I say, what do you think about that? Because sometimes beginners don't know how to set goals, right? When I first hired a personal trainer, he asked me what my goal was. I said, I want to gain 10 pounds of muscle. And he was like, looking back, where did I come up with that stupid goal? I don't know, I just made it up. But a good instructor will help you adapt your goal and make it realistic. Successful people are consistent and they celebrate their wins. I gotta tell you that if you plan to do something for a long time, maybe start a business, maybe change your body, maybe learn a second language, it's going to take a while, and that's important. It's also important to celebrate wins along the way. It could be the first time you order food in Spanish at a restaurant. Amazing. Celebrate it. Take A second. Appreciate yourself. It could be when you make your first sale in your business, your first thousand dollars, your first hundred thousand dollars, maybe when you hire somebody. These things are important because we often have this idea in life, life that success only happens at the end. The music swells, somebody salutes and that's success. No, success happens every day. Success happens along the way. Success happens when you get a troll comment and you realize, oh, this isn't really about me, it's actually about them. Success happens when some customer gives you negative feedback and you realize, oh my God, they're right. I do need to fix this in my program. So you gotta find a way to be consistent and, and to celebrate those wins along the way. Successful people get out of their own freaking heads. I can tell you this right now. There are so many people I know who are very talented, but they are trapped in their own heads and all they do is spin. Why would anybody buy my program? Why would anybody sign up for my business? There's so many other businesses like this. I don't know why anyone would do this. I need to have the perfect website. I genuinely want to just quiet that voice in their head and say, I love you. But you really need to stop obsessing about yourself. Instead you need to fall in love with your customers. Falling in love means you ask them, what are your goals? What do you want? What's stopping you? What have you already tried? Why hasn't it worked? What would it look like if it did work? What would it feel like? You're genuinely getting curious. This is what I do with my own programs. We do deep customer research. We talk to people. Why do you think I'm on social media talking to people all the time? You think I want to hear a bunch of magas telling me, ramit Sethi, you're so stupid. Stop talking politics. What do you know? You haven't even put together a five piece puzzle in your entire life. But I'm listening. Not really to them, but I'm listening to smart people who tell me their problems and what solutions they want. Don't be afraid to have these candid conversations following that same principle of listening and falling in love with your customers. Successful people are not afraid to have candid conversations. If there's something they want or something that's not working for them, they'll talk about it. Maybe they hired somebody to come and clean their house and they're not liking how the person shows up 20 minutes late every time they will talk to them. I have a principle. My money is good money. That means I'm willing to talk to you about what's going on. But here's my expectation. I want it done my way because my money is good money. Successful people are not afraid of these conversations. They are not merely people pleasers. They are. They have a vision. And they have learned the skills of talking to people. Politely, yes, but talking to people so that they get their vision to come to reality. Now, successful people have lots of other things that they do differently. They are weird and different than other people and they lean into that. That's okay. They find their community. They also ignore fake metrics like number of books read in a year. Remember when people were talking about The I read 232 books. Nobody cares. Okay? That's not important. I'd rather have you read two books and actually use them than get book summaries of 232. Those things do not matter. The reality is building success and wealth takes time, effort and discipline. There are no shortcuts. I want to be straight with you. I've been doing this for 20 years. It takes a lot of work. I think it's worth it. More importantly, I look back at the people that I've affected in my life. My team, my family, my students. And that makes it all worth it. Up next, I'll show you how to actually get rich. But before I get to that, make sure you hit the subscribe button so that I can keep it real with you on this channel. No bs. Now let's get to part three, how to actually get rich. Well, it's pretty simple. Here's what you should be doing right now with your money. If you have high interest debt, you should have a plan to pay it off. And you should know the exact month and year that you will be debt free. You should be building a six month emergency fund. That might take time, but. But you should have that automatically being built. You should be automatically investing 10% or more of your paycheck. That's take home pay. The more the better. Because that money is where real wealth is created. And if you have a partner, you are talking about money every single month. Get my new book, Money for Couples. And one last thing, take an honest assessment of the people around you. Remember that you don't have to give up friends just because they don't run a business like you or they're not into fitness like you. No, we have different people in our life for different reasons. That's okay. But when you are starting out on something new, you will quickly discover that you need positive energy in your life. So when you look at the people you spend a lot of time with, the people you text with, the people you see on the weekends, are they tearing you down or lifting you up? Are they encouraging you to push yourself? Or are they saying, why are you staying in on Friday night to work? We should be going out for drinks? Make sure you are surrounded by the right people. That way you'll be much more likely to reach your goals. Remember, true wealth is not just about flashy cars or fancy wines. If you like those, great. Use your money. I support it. But wealth is about the freedom to work on what you love, to take care of your family, to live your rich life on your terms. If you're ready to stop chasing shortcuts and start building real wealth, hit subscribe and check out my playbook here.