Ramit Sethi on Creating a Rich Life & The Call to Action

[Music] hello I'm Emily Rett and we're here with an inspiring entrepreneur he's a New York Times bestselling author and the brains behind I will teach you to be.com ramit Sati thanks for being here thanks for having me it's great to meet you thank you all right well let's dive in a little bit of background I will teach you tobr rich.com you started it was a personal finance blog while you're at Stanford Zar Revenue probably negative negative you're in the hole um it has grown today into be a multi-million dollar business that helps people around the world to live rich lives when you first started it out back in college did you have this bigger Vision did you know you're on to something that would really be successful one day I I didn't have a Grand Vision I just felt I had something that the world needed to hear and as a cocky 20 21y old I tried everything to get people to listen I had paid my way through college with scholarships uh undergrad and grad school and I had learned about personal finance because I took some of the scholarship money and invested it in the stock market and lost money so I'd learned about money and I'd also learned about psychology and to me there was something really interesting there this idea that we know we should do all these things but we don't really do it we know we should go work out more but we don't we know we should save money but we don't and that Nexus that is where I love I live there and so I started trying to teach my friends about money in dorm rooms and dining halls and people would say yeah that sounds awesome and then they would never come they would never come to these classes in retrospect who wants to go to a class on money even if it's free when you just think you're going to feel bad about yourself and you're going to realize how little you know so I did this for about a year and a half very frustrating finally I started a block I still felt like I something the world needed to hear but you know my thinking was maybe these lazy college kids will read it from their dorm room and in fact that's exactly what happened well right now if you go to I will te you tobr rich.com you can click on page 230 of your blog and read those initial blog post and they only have a few comments and you see the progression of your blog turned business over the years is there a defining moment you can think of or something you did that really pulled the switch on the revenue that catapulted you from kind of hobby blog to business well I love reading those old posts actually cringe reading them because it's the way I wrote and in fact some of the stuff I even wrote I disagree with now but I left it up on purpose because I want people to be able to see that you don't start as an entrepreneur with this Grand Vision a lot of times you just start by writing one post and even my YouTube videos you go back and look at them they're not very good my hair is really messed up I have this awkward camera angle from my laptop but that's what started it off and then eventually I learned about video Crews and great camera and this and that um so for me I wrote for about 6 months no comments pretty much nobody was reading you can go back and look at those posters no comments a couple things happened one I spent a lot of time reaching out to other people and telling them about what I was doing so I reached out to the Wall Street Journal and I said look you guys are great but you need to understand young people let me write for you for free and they were like ah go away you know they kind of blew me off and I knew that that would happen but I just wrote them again and again just really gently saying hey L your article on this thought you might find this interesting and then one day about 6 months after I started my blog I got a phone call from the Wall Street Journal and they said we're writing a post on financial bloggers we would love to feature you and I you know I hadn't spoken to the Wall Street Journal before this is a new thing for me and they wrote about I will teach you to be rich among many other Financial blogs and they linked to my site I still remember that day I got 9,000 visitors I still remember it's over 11 years later and I I just felt like wow so once I will teach you to be rich started to bring in Revenue bring in money there such a transition that happens there did you get those feelings of fraud that a lot of entrepreneurs get when when they put themselves out there in the world as a professional the scariest moment of my entire business career was the first time I launched a $4.95 ebook $4.95 I laugh now we have we have courses that are 12,000 or even just much more than that I I've been writing my site for free for three or four years and back then nobody really bought that much content online certainly not in information it was more um it was less common but I just said you know what I want to try selling something and see what will happen just pure curiosity and I didn't really care about Revenue hence the $4.95 but to be very honest I was also petrified because I was worried people would call me a sellout I was worried that I had built up this community but that I had never charged so it would be just as kind of breaking the community and the day I launched it was probably one of the most surprising days uh in my entire business career because what happened well all my fears came true people did call me a sellout they said screw you I will teach RIT to be rich oh I see and in my head I was so confused I was frankly pretty heartbroken because I'd been writing for free like putting all my heart putting all my skills into this writing building this community and I was getting these comments but then at the same time lots of people were actually buying this ebook and so they weren't the ones sending these sort of mean messages how dare you charge maybe if it were a dollar I would buy it they were actually just quietly buying and I started to notice really weird things happening the people who bought would open my emails more they would get better results they would respond to more emails and I saw this bifurcation I saw this difference in the people who just wanted free stuff and the people who were willing to invest in themselves and that was the day where I decided I have to figure out what's going on and I spent the next 3 years really learning how to manage my own psychology as a CEO because when you're charging when you're going into different parts of your business you are always going to get lots of feedback a lot of it negative and to have to learn to listen to some of the feedback but also lead in a way that people want to follow they want to learn from you you're influencing them that was the hardest part of the entire business process I have to ask what did your family and good friends think of this do you still have family and friends that really don't know what you do and they're like yeah I got this cousin REM and he's you know sells stuff online like no they don't even know they don't they wouldn't even say sell stuff online yes I have friends and family who don't quite know how to describe what I do so the nice thing is I have a book and they say oh he wrote a book or oh he was in the New York Times and it's like got it people understand that they wouldn't say he creates courses that take years to test and he's expanding the definition of a rich like they that's very detailed for them but it's like he has a book and he has a lot of people who read his site enough to be proud of you they know you're not starving all is good exactly okay well I've heard that book story before um which is awesome but I'm wondering people love to celebrate success and to me that's a success because it did turn out well for you have you had any recent failures professionally or personally and how did you overcome that oh yeah I mean so many how much time do we have on tape I have I can list them off I'll tell you a couple um you know the most common failures I think once your business starts to scale are often around hiring and um I tend to get emotionally involved meaning I if somebody makes it through the hiring process then I like them and I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt and so sometimes I will let I will make excuses for people when they're probably not the best fit and what I've learned from my VI and my mentors is you know it's you're not doing anybody a service if they're not in the right job you're actually doing them a service to make sure they're in the right position and the right company and whether that's yours or that's somebody else's you need to be definitive and you need to be clear about that so for example when somebody comes on board particularly if they're reporting to me I will set a 21-day rubric of what they should be accomplishing in 21 days and I found for myself that in the past I would make excuses oh they were busy something came up but at 21 days it's written in stone this is what you need to be accomplishing and if you're hitting it great We're Off to the Races and if not then we already agreed on it it's not happening this probably isn't the best fit for you I love that advice you have a primarily virtual team would you would you say all of them are they're 100% virtual when did you make that first hire except for me even if you run um a business that's not online that is so hard to take that First Leap into giving up control and realizing you're only going to bust through your barrier with more people okay so I have an accountant who works with two types of people he works with internet people and he works with celebrities so I asked him one day what's the difference between the two he didn't miss a beat he said internet people never want to have an office and they hate hiring people and celebrities make a lot of money and they spend every last sentiment I found that to be true I think a lot of people who are online don't think about hiring they might hire a few random contractors and that's fine I did the same thing when I started but eventually this is what I learned I had this mental model I would tell people I just want a small intimate team what I realized was I actually want impact more than anything and if that means that I need to grow my team then so be it and So eventually scaled my team grew learned about management processes these are the things where you don't read blog posts to learn about it you go into the classics you read management books you have mentors and advisers and I learned about that um so that's been key to scaling my team okay um let's make a bit of a shift here and get tactical on we'll talk first of all how many programs you currently have I will teach you to be rich we have over 18 products in general yes and a lot of your uh students are customers of more than one product You' say yeah they tend to buy more than once so we have a philosophy called students for life we want to be with you at every point in your life and that's really important to us and we build material that they that we want them to engage with for a long time so for example I'll tell you a couple things we do we do lifetime access for our programs so when you join if you get our dream job course you can use it to get this job and the next job and when you're 20 years from now we look at our data and we find that people who buy once tend to repurchase at a rate over 2,00% higher than non- buyers what that means is once they Join one of our programs they love it so they are like I'm in if this is this good I wonder what the other programs have and that works well for us and it also works well for them what would you say are the top two tactics that you use your business to generate more Revenue because I see a lot of people out there they're doing a ton of Facebook ads or they're hosting a lot of webinars um I know back in the day you did creative live or other platforms what have you found that really works for you that you you're continuing to do I think webcasts or webinars work really well as a tactic um I think that constant like building a relationship through constant emails also works and that's that's a subtle one a lot of people if you're on their email list they only email you when they want to sell something I think that's a huge mistake that's like the friend who only comes knocking when he wants some money or you know he wants something you don't want to be that friend so we send a lot of emails that have no sales whatsoever well that's how this interview is happening because I joined your list and in the first couple weeks after you join um I will teach you to be rich be prepared because the first email comes out saying all right get ready I'm going to give you enough I think he said enough knowledge for an MBA in the next couple weeks but if you can't carve out this amount of time go ahead and unsubscribe and what that did to me I thought well oh no I'm going to carve out that time I'm going to show him you know I'm going to do this um at one point I reached out to you because you asked a question your email I thought all right I'm going to respond and um you asked for the financials in my business because because if if I had the opportunity I could join like a invite only program and I think I actually qualified for that but you saw that my goal is to have um more of an online business so you I was really that's kind of how you won me over is you took an opportunity you could have sold me on a what was it $12,000 program and instead you said no this isn't what your goal is you actually need to hold off until you can learn a zero to launch students for life I don't want the additional $10,000 from you today that's I have no interest in it I don't want that money I don't need that money I would rather have you join use my free stuff or join a program like the one you ended up doing and get so successful with it that all of a sudden you're like anything else I will teach puts out I'm in so we want to extend that relationship for Life instead of trying to make that quick Buck Right early on we really want to slow it down and say what's right for you A lot of times we tell people don't buy just don't buy from us use my free stuff and once you're ready come back we're still here we've been here for 10 plus years we'll be here for many more that is very counterintuitive to people who are used to being sold sold sold to and I think it makes such a difference when you can trust someone when someone's not trying to make a quick Buck but they're actually looking out for your best interest I want to just grab a couple things I see some criticism when Ian you put your wait what people criticize you put yourself out for it right fa um one thing that I will teach you to be rich really um talks about is that we don't want people who have credit card debt to enter our programs our Flagship programs and I think that sounds great now the criticism to that people will say is oh he's just saying that to sound good how would they really know if anyone has credit card debt so can I put you on the spot a little and ask you what would your response be this is a policy that I came up with years ago um where I tell anyone who has credit card debt do not join our Flagship programs we don't want you to join it I want you to use my book here's the free chapter on paying off your debt and come back when you're ready and we would love to have you so why do I do this and I'll tell you I'm happy to respond to that we do this because we don't I don't believe that it is the correct thing to do that someone's in credit card debt and they're joining multi th000 courses on self-development you know what they need to do they need to pay off their debt okay and I have a book it's $10 you can get it from the library or you can even get it for free that's what they need to do is pay their debt off they don't need to be joining program after program we do this again because students for life we don't want that money right now we want them to focus and use the free stff so we came up with two approaches to this and this is the carrot and the stick the carrot is I tell them why I'm not trying to make a quick Buck nobody on our team is and they kind of they're like wow this is actually pretty refreshing oh he even gave me the PDF that's pretty cool the stick is if we find out that you joined with credit card debt we will refund your money and we will ban you for life but how would you find out I join let's say a $5,000 credit card debt um I'm not going to tell you that because now maybe I maybe that's incentive I'm like you know what he's so honest I'm definitely joining now you would be surprised um of the people who refund they tell us why they are very honest with us because we're very honest with them we call every single person who joins our programs we have a relationship with them and they often will tell us I join with credit card debt and then we ban them for like we do exactly what we said we would do so but we also get thousands of emails a month with people saying I would have joined this I know your rule on credit card debt we put it right at the top of our emails we're not trying to hide anything and they say I'm going to pay off my debt I will be back in November and then I'm going to join your programs we find that those students who do that are actually the some of the best caliber students that we have all right I want to power through a few more questions because we have some exciting news about a new program coming out that I want to get to um if you could go back and change anything about how you started I will teach you to be rich uh what would you change to improve it oh I mean I I'm not sure I would name it I will teach you be rich honestly it's been a mixed bag it's very catchy it's very clear about rich rich is not just money it's about a rich life and that could be travel that could be paying for your parents' retirement could be whatever you want but you know when you hear a name called I will teach you be rich the guard kind of goes up and I get that that's why we talk about things like featured in The New York Times Stanford Graduate that's not just for ego it's because I understand that you're skeptical the other thing I would do which I didn't really get until recently was think about brand and for me I'm much more of a results oriented guy so I had pretty ugly sight but I thought that my content was pretty good what I came to learn is that brand and the feeling you get really matters so the visuals the way it looks the way it feels I think so many sites do this in a beautiful way in fact retail stores if you go into Soho you walk in you just feel something and it's different in an REI versus a Chanel that's something I would have paid attention to much earlier on so what's in store for the future of I will teach you to be rich well we have many new programs that we're working on years and years in advance uh one of our newest ones is a new course on copyrighting and this is something that's really exciting for us because I love to write we love to write and we think that one of the most influential things you can do for your business is change the way you write and the way that consumers perceive you so we're teaching exactly what we've learned and ways to dramatically boost your business grow sales grow traffic using some of our copy techniques how do you break through the noise if you get a lot of email newsletters it's hard to not just start sounding like the people you read so how have you remained so authentic in your voice are we going to learn that in the course maybe give us some hints now to absolutely um so I like to write the the way I speak and I tell jokes I make fun of people I make fun of myself and if I have something that I think would be useful for you I'm happy to tell you about it one of the things I notice when I read a lot of email newsletters is like you said they start to sound the same it's like exclusive first opportunity to Skyrocket your business and you're like didn't I read that in 25 other emails today couple things that I've done to change that number one is get outside your own domain I unsubscribed from most of the newsletters that are me too newsletters the second thing is I started looking at other areas so fashion has amazing copy um magazines have some of the best copywriters history if you go back and read some of the old stuff amazing copy really studying that copy and then trying it out so one what happens is a lot of people write it down and people are great verbally but the minute they put their pen to their paper they become these really awkward they're writing words like exclusively yours nobody that out so say it take the copy you write and say it out loud and just ask yourself does this sound real if you can't tell record it play it back to yourself it's going to feel horrible to listen to yourself but you can see if that copy resonates or not I used to write a comedy column in college I would actually take it around to people and test it and if they laughed at the jokes I knew I had a good one and if they just kind of were like then I knew it wasn't good enough you feel like you know you right after reading a couple years yeah I mean like one of the things I used to try to was all these quirky weirdnesses of myself like for example I listen to Whitney Houston in the gym like what grown man does that and admits it no and admits it so so I used to never admit it I would hide it my music tastes is horrible I know that but finally I started becoming more comfortable with myself and talking about it and once you lose the fear of something you can actually make fun of yourself and what I found I was petrified to send that but once I did that I found that people were like wow this guy's a real weirdo but I kind of like that he admits it it's endearing yeah and I'm not trying it's not a tactic to get people to like me I genuinely like that music I genuinely write about how I'm afraid of using a bedet I still haven't used one you know like these are things but I'm not just doing shock jokes when you're growing your business you don't have to write about bedday and be all this sensationalistic if your business is for example promoting a different type of business or you're writing to a different audience they probably won't resonate with that writing great copy is about knowing who your audience is and also being authentic to yourself so your jokes if you are funny you're going to use different jokes if you're not funny don't try to be funny most people are not funny that's okay you know and like I would not write about let's all sing around the campfire and enjoy our Sisterhood not going to happen that's not who I am so when you dial it into who your audiences and then who you are you can actually write about brutally honest stuff James altucher is an example a guy who does exactly this he does it beautifully when can we sign up for your program and what is it called it's opening this year it's called call to action and the URL is the call to action.com do you think you were destined to be an entrepreneur online like this or your life just kind of threw you some curved balls that you followed and here we are I I don't I don't I don't think I was destined at all I was going to work at Google I think if I had followed my life Destiny I would probably be wearing an ill fitting polo shirt with a Cisco logo you know sitting in a cubicle somewhere so that's if I followed my default path I think that we can all choose areas of our life where we want to be different and it could be our relationships could be our business could be where we live some people don't want to have the traditional white pick fence but that's all from a small series of consistent decisions thank you so much for joining us and we can go to I will teach you tobr rich.com and the call to action.com thanks for having me [Music]

Channel: Emily Richett // Mama Bear Survival

Views: 25,290

Keywords: ramit sethi, the call to action, Entrepreneurship (Field Of Study), Entrepreneur (Magazine), emily richett, Entrepreneur (Profession)

Id: aEvo46wEUAQ

Length: 23min 3sec (1383 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 11 2015