The Tim Ferriss Show - Ep 34: Ramit Sethi (Part 2) on Persuasion, Negotiation, and Turning a Blog Into a Multi-Million-Dollar Business

Episode Date: October 3, 2014

This is Part 2 of a two-part interview.Ramit Sethi built his personal finance blog up to 500,000+ readers per month (http://www.ramitsethi.com), and has since turned it into a revenue generating monster. I don't use that phrasing lightly. In this episode, we dig into the nitty-gritty tools, software, and experiments he's used to turn a college side project into a multi-million-dollar business with 30+ employees.This episode is brought to you by The Tim Ferriss Book Club. See the 4-6 books (and free samples of all) at http://www.audible.com/timsbooksAlso, would you like to join me and Richard Branson for a week of mentorship on his private island? Take a look at this: http://www.shopify.com/tim***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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the number one, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Last time, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Check it out. Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show. This is Tim Ferriss. What you're about to hear is part two of a two-part conversation with Ramit Sethi. He is an entrepreneur. He's tried venture-backed. Now he's going self-funded, bootstrapped. He is a behavioral change and persuasion expert and also a very good friend of mine. If you didn't catch the first part, you might want to do that before venturing in. If you don't mind your stories as more of a jigsaw puzzle, then by all means, keep on listening. And we tend to bounce around quite a lot. So I think that you could almost listen to them in reverse order and still get a lot out of it. But for the background context and so on,

part one has a lot of that. This episode is brought to you by the Tim Ferriss Book Club, a handful of books that have had a huge impact on my life. And keep in mind that I read three to four books a week on average. So these are four to six that have really made a huge difference. Check them out at audible.com forward slash Tim's books, audible.com forward slash Tim's books. And if you would like to join me, Richard Branson, Seth Godin, and some other amazing folks, I'm not calling myself amazing, but those people are amazing on Necker Island, which is Richard Branson's private island for a week of mentorship.

It's going to be amazing. Check out shopify.com forward slash Tim. That's shopify, S-H-O-P-I-F-Y dot com forward slash Tim. And now without further ado, please enjoy part two, the final part of the Tim Ferriss show with Ramit Sethi. Now, so the revenue per email, I'm your quintessential case of reticence to monetize, right? And of course I've been, I've been ridiculed for years by many friends because of this, which is fine. My general approach to date has been, it's either free or it's really, really high end and very expensive. And I think a good example of that was OTK, opening the kimono, that event that I said was going to be one time, and at least to date, it has only been one time. And it was, depending on when people signed up,

it was between $7,500 and $10,000 a seat. And it sold out from one blog post. And I remember I was talking to someone about event management somebody who does this for a living i mean someone who's putting on events once a quarter making a lot of money from the events or or so i thought and i asked her at one point what she would do to fill an event with between 100 and say 20 and 200 people at this given price point she said well you're going to have to hire a full-time person to do the following 12 things. You're probably going to have to pay for the following type of marketing and outbound and this and that and the other thing. And all it took was one blog post. And now the way that I explain that is that

I've given away so much free content and value, hundreds of books worth of content on the blog that I've established a level of trust with my audience so that when I finally offer something for sale, they understand and assume I've given a lot of thought, which is true. Do you think that's a foolish approach? No, I think it's great. I mean, I give away 98% of my material for free. And then for many of my flagship courses, they're extremely expensive. In fact, 10 to 100 times what my competitors charge. So I love the idea. In fact, I'll even take it one step further. A lot of times people, they would come to me and say like, that's ridiculous. Maybe if it were $30. And I just smiled because I don't play in the $30

sandbox. I don't want to play there. I'd rather give it to you for free than play in the $30. And I just smiled because I don't play in the $30 sandbox. I don't want to play there. I'd rather give it to you for free than play in the $30 sandbox. And I think it's very important when you think about pricing and positioning, it's very important to think, what does this mean for you? It's the same reason where if you go to the farmer's market and you see a guy selling a t-shirt, you know, he's selling it for 25 bucks and you go in there and say, I'll give you $3. Look, the guy's probably still making a profit on $3. But why is he gonna laugh you out of his store and just turn his back on you?

Why? Because he doesn't wanna play in the $3 sandbox and he would rather just say a blanket no than even make a small amount of revenue. So I really love the idea of give away as much as you can for free, but don't be afraid to aggressively sell. We are unapologetic about how aggressive we are because we've done the testing and we know that it works. So we sell at high price points and we sell, you know, when we sell. And, um, I mean, I could share stories of

how we've done that and all that stuff, but I think you should be unapologetic about that. And, um, so, so let's take a, take a real case then something that I've been considering, but I've been very hesitant about, and I've been considering this for a long time. I know you're probably kind of laughing to yourself because every time we meet up, I'm like, you know, I've been thinking about this thing and, ah, God, it's just like, Jesus Christ. I mean, stop thinking about it and either do it or do not. I mean, it's a very, it's very sensitive ground for me. So I've considered doing a course, but even that term, I get kind of antsy around. I've been considering trying to do an experiment whereby I try to take the adherence rate with say the four hour body and slow carb diet and so on, which is very high. And we've tracked it against multiple other diets. We've done randomized testing and longitudinal studies

looking at, basically out of every hundred people, how many fail and quit on different diets. And the slow-carb diet has a very, very high adherence rate. And of course, the good program you follow is better than the perfect program that you quit. So looking at the behavioral science side of things, a fantasy of mine is to take, let's just say this is an arbitrary number, but a thousand to 2000 people and try to experiment on those people and charge them for it. But in a sort of a tight knit private community with a bunch of stuff to try to get that number as high as possible, the sort of the adherence and conversion rate as high as possible for, I don't know, probably a four to eight week period. If I were to do something like that, and if you think there's a better idea, I'd love to hear it. But if I were to do something like that, how would you suggest I approach it in a way that I don't get lumped in? Because we both

know there are a lot of folks out there who are just like super scammy folks in the kind of internet marketing world. How can I avoid getting lumped into that? Because I feel like that would do more damage to me than any revenue to be derived from such a product. What are your thoughts there? This is something I struggle with myself because I don't want to be lumped. I mean, the name of my site is I Will Teach You To Be Rich. And I mean, and then I have online video courses, you know, that range anywhere from a couple hundred bucks to $12,000 for some high end stuff. How do I prevent myself from being one of those guys with, you know, two thumbs up in front of a jet that's actually rented and being towed away as we speak, you know? I mean, I've seen the dark side of this industry and it is simultaneously disgusting and hilarious.

I mean, the stories I could tell you are unbelievable. So how do you do that? How do you maintain your integrity and still sell? And I think there's a few things that I learned. Number one is you're in total control. So a lot of people said, I don't want to write long form copy or I don't want to have to write those sales letters that have the yellow highlighting it. And my answer was, you don't have to do that.

You can do whatever you want. There's a reason people do that. I think it's worth learning, but you don't have to do that. The next thing is you can choose who you allow to join your material. So I make it, when I first started, I was like the classic novice seller where I was like, hey guys, here's 10 reasons that you should join. Please, please, please join. It'll be so great. Come on, we'll be friends. And nobody wants to go to a party where someone's begging you to come. In a recent launch we did, over 1 million people saw our

launch and we had fewer than five complaints about price. Not 5%, but five. And this was a very high price product. Why? Because I'm very selective about who I allow. I'll give you an example. I always wanted to run a business my way, not just appealing to anyone. So one of the things I do is I prohibit anyone with credit card debt from joining my flagship

courses. How do you know this is this is an interesting point. I was going to ask this earlier. How do you sort of mechanistically or process wise? How do you do that? Because this is a super important point. Yeah. So this let me tell you about the decision and I'll tell you what happens.

So there's a well-known sushi restaurant in San Francisco and it always has a line out the door. And if you're not there by 7 30, you're not getting in. And when I finally got in for the first time, you know, I'm like looking around like a weirdo. I always want to optimize stuff. And they've got like so much empty space in the restaurant. The first thing I do, I don't sit down and look at the sushi. I'm like, if they added four tables, they could increase revenue 25% because I'm a nutcase. And what I realized was they just don't care. Revenue is not their primary goal. They want to run the business the way they want. And I love that. I love that I can

run a business and tell people who I don't want, you're not right for this material. And so I reframed it in my mind from begging people to, look, I would love to serve the right people, but I'm not looking for everyone. I'm just looking for the right people. So the decision to not allow people with credit card debt to join my flagship program, that cost me over $2 million a year. But I think it's the right thing to do. Ethically, I don't think that they would be buying it if they knew what was best. And also, I've always told them, use my free material, pay off your debt, come back. I'll still be here.

I've been here 10 years. I'll be here for the next 20. So we use a combination of carrot and stick. Carrot, I explain to them why, right? I don't need an extra thousand dollars. It's not going to make a difference to my lifestyle, but it would be great for them to take that money and put it towards their debt. And I explain why in the context of why I'm doing this and all that stuff. The stick is if they join anyway, and I find out, not only will I refund their money, but I will ban them for life. And to my knowledge, no one else does this, but it's important to me. And I always wanted to run a business the way I wanted to. So once we did that, we saw a very, very dramatic shift in the type of customers

that were joining my programs. I mean, it trickles down to every part of the organization. We have higher open rates, higher adherence rates, better customer service emails. And, you know, when people hear it the first time, they're like, what? It's a very un-American thing to be told you can't buy. But for my needs and ultimately, I think for theirs, I think I'm doing it out of service to them. They shouldn't be buying my course. They should be paying off that debt and then coming back. How do you find out how many people are on that banned list roughly? Oh, a lot, a lot. It's called DNS do not sell. I take great pleasure in adding people to that list because like I gave you a chance, you disobeyed my rules

and now I'm sorry, you don't get to join anymore. How do you decipher that they have gone, they have actually gone into debt to purchase the product is because they stopped paying and on multiple plans. There's a few ways. There's a couple that I won't mention publicly, but I will tell you that of the people who ask for a refund, because all of my courses, you know, I'm so confident about them. You can take the entire course and ask for a refund. But we believe that most people do the right thing. If they get value out of the course, they stick with it. And that's why we've been able to grow and continue getting people to join. Fully 40% of those people who refund do it because they have a debt problem.

Okay, so those people are banned forever. What do you think of an approach, just to avoid that, because that's one of my nightmare scenarios, is someone going beyond their means and digging an even deeper hole for themselves by going into debt for something that they really shouldn't be, given their financial position, spending money on.k i mean i had i had a uh i had an application process and we turned we turned away a lot of people but it really dug into the finances and so it would ask questions like do you have at least fifty thousand dollars in savings in the bank because this was a product, keep in mind, that was an event that was $10,000 for some folks. And secondly, we did not take any credit cards. You had to wire the money. And with the combination of those two approaches, a number of things came to light.

Number one, you have to have the money to wire it. So there's that. Secondly, if people said, no, I don't have X amount of savings, then we would politely tell them that we didn't want them to come to the event because it would put too much of a strain on their finances. And we ask questions like, would you feel a high degree of pressure? Would you feel a lot of pressure to make the price of this event back in the subsequent six months? And if they answered yes, then nine times out of 10, they were out. The other thing that did for an event at least, and maybe this doesn't apply to online, but I suspect that it does because people are even more of a pain in the ass when it's

virtual. If people got really uppity in their responses, I remember one guy said, yes, I have plenty of money. If you and your financial nanny want to see my jet on the tarmac when I come, you're welcome to check it out. And I was like, thank God for that dick response, because now you are not going to be able to behave that way at the event. Goodbye. Yeah. And that was the end of that guy.

But is there a way that you would improve upon that process? Or what do you think of taking that approach? Yeah, I love it. I still remember it to this day. And I really admired you for doing that because so few people will. And ironically, when you stop chasing the raw dollars and you start chasing something a little bit more meaningful than that, like in your case, you wanted to get the right audience. In our case, we want the exact same thing. We want true behavioral change. Then ironically, you'll have more money than you ever know what to do with. I think that's a great approach. I do think that when we first instituted this, I had a lot of angry people telling me, who are you to

tell me what I can spend my money on, blah, blah, blah. And one of the things I learned is if a lot of people are telling you something, like I'm happy to blame one person if they're really rude to me, but if 20 people are rude to me, it's probably my fault. So I looked at the copy and I simply hadn't explained why they couldn't join. I just said like, credit card debt is bad, blah. And understandably, people got upset. So I learned how to refine the message. It took us about six months and those questions have vanished. They just went away. So I love the application, especially for something expensive. If it's like a hundred bucks, I probably wouldn't do something like that. I would just tell them the rules. But I think it's for anyone listening, whether you're starting a business, whether you

have children, whatever it is you're doing, people want boundaries. We want boundaries. And it takes a very high status person to be able to say, this is what I'm looking for. And this is what I'm going to put up with. And if that's not right for you, that's okay. Maybe we're not right for each other. And I think you become so much more appealing once you do that. Well, I think you need, I think human beings, and certainly speaking for myself, need constraints to be productive or even happy for that matter. And I think the checklist manifesto is a great example of that. You do not want to have infinite options for every action. And by creating constraints, whether it's for writing, whether it's for art, I think you can dramatically improve

your creative output and your general sense of satisfaction when you very artfully and strategically create constraints for yourself. And I think things like the Pomodoro technique, for instance, 23 minutes on with a break afterwards, provide structures within which you can be more effective than if you're willy-nilly, in a very vague sense, trying to, quote, be productive. Just to shift gears somewhat completely,

you mentioned something earlier that I've never really asked you about or brought a question to mind. You mentioned that people have said to you, go back to India. And needless to say, I've never received, even though I'm of Danish descent and I'm a European mutt, I don't get go back to Denmark very much. How does race factor into your life at all? If it does, I'm curious. This is a good question. We haven't talked about this before. No. Very interesting. So I think it affects a lot of the ways I think about things. You know, I was raised with two immigrant parents and from India, pretty traditional household. My mom stayed home with four kids. My dad went to work and, you know, we went to temple pretty frequently,

things like that. I have a certain outlook on life thanks to my parents and my family. Like a few things. One is like being very honest about stuff. Like Indian people or pretty much anyone except for in America, if you're overweight and you get off the plane, the first thing they're going to say is, wow, you got fat. It's like point blank. And the truth is you did get fat. So that brutal honesty, you know, the first couple of times you hear it, you're a little sensitive, but at this point, you know, you can't change a culture not overnight and not one person. And so I appreciate that honesty. And you'll find that in my material. It's like, look, let's just call it for what, let's call it out and let's call it

what it is. And I'm not saying that I'm going around to people saying you're fat. I'm saying that if you can't afford something, let's just talk about that and be honest about it. Or conversely, if you want a thousand dollar jacket or pair of shoes and you can afford it, awesome. Who cares what people think? Let me show you how to get it. I think that played a role. You know, I learned how to negotiate from a young age. My mom was taking me to Macy's and showing me how to negotiate there. I'm not kidding. It's awesome.

Macy's, that's great. Most people would assume that that just would not work if you go to a big box. My mom still negotiates there to this day. She would be like, don't talk to that lady. She's too experienced. You can tell. Go look at that one. She looks new. Go try it with her. I'm like, all right. So I learned that. And then, you know, just in general, I think a lot of ideas about service and, you know,

wanting to give back. And I think probably some of the most popular things I write on my site are about the crazy things my mom and dad do, you know, because they're Indian. Like, you know, my, for example, my mom trying to set me up with everyone. My dad who took my resume, which I was trying to get an internship in college. He took my resume and changed my major to computer science. He literally changed it. I'm like, dad, I'm not in computer science. And then he just didn't respond. I'm like, legit. That is really funny. So I remember a post that was put up on the blog sometime ago, it was a guest post, called How to Negotiate Like an Indian. And we've kind of talked about some of this stuff just culturally. There are definitely some differences and some patterns you can spot, right, in certain cultures.

Just like you mentioned being called out as fat. I mean, as it turns out, pretty much in any non-English speaking or non-natively English speaking country that I've been to, that is the case, right? You go to China and they're like, you know, and they're like, they'll just point blank. I mean, especially the Chinese, or you go to, you know, you're fat and you go to South America, man, if they think you're kind of on the same team, meaning you look slightly Latin, like you're going to be like gordita, gordita, you know, you're going to be called fat. It's just, that's going to be your nickname in a lot of cases. But when I, when this post went up, I had a lot of people come out of the woodwork and they're

like, that's racist. And the fact of the matter is, it was a very complimentary post, right? And if you look at the stats, at least last time I checked it out, in the case of Indians, founded more engineering and tech companies in the US from like 97 to 2007 than immigrants from like Britain, Taiwan, China, Japan combined. I've been really impressed with, say, Thai for the organization in Silicon Valley, the Indus Entrepreneur, which is just amazing.

How do people respond to your commentary on sort of, I mean, you're Indians, of course, you have sort of license to talk about growing up Indian and all these cultural idiosyncrasies, but do you get a lot of flack for it or do you not? And I'm curious why or why not. That's a great question. And no, not really. I get it only from journalists who are in a way trying to stir things up, asking like, oh, is this an issue for you? And the answer is no. People get it. So let me give you some examples of things that I talk about

as an Indian person. I talk about negotiating like an Indian. I talk about how when I would go to buy a car, when my dad would go to buy a car for our family, most people walk in and walk out. We spent three days there. I'm not joking. We would eat breakfast at the dealership. We would negotiate all day. Then my dad would say, this is too much.

We're going home. And we would leave. And then we'd go back the next day. It's not a joke. And in fact, speaking of like Indian terms, here's a really funny one. If you Google how to raise a financial wizard, the New York Times did a article and they have my parents' picture right there. Take a look at the URL. The URL was originally how to raise a financial guru, but they thought it would be too offensive. So the URL persists, how to change a financial guru, but they changed the title to how to raise a financial wizard. My take is, look, I'm not going to comment on

race relations or anything like that. I think that the Indian community is amazingly strong. I joke about being Asian. Sometimes I have a site, a side site called your surrogate Asian father. You haven't seen that before. I've never publicly mentioned it, but, uh, but I tell people like as a joke, look, I am your surrogate Asian father. And what I mean by that is we all want someone who would, who will tell it to us straight, who will tell us when, you know what, you did a good job, but I don't think you did your best or that was amazing. And we should celebrate. Actually, no Asian father would ever say that last part. They would only say you didn't, you didn't get an A plus what's wrong with you, which is the correct way, uh, in my opinion. So, you know, it's partly joking, but I think we all kind of like, I have people who are Jewish. I have people who So, you know, it's partly joking, but I think we all kind of like, I have

people who are Jewish. I have people who have, you know, Latin parents and they all kind of get it, whether it's Asian or not. We all kind of get having that one uncle who's like never quite satisfied, but you know that he supports you and he loves you. And I think that's exactly what I will teach you to be rich is about. Oh, man. Great. Great stuff. Okay. I'm just going to bounce all over the place.

I'm going to throw some random questions at you. The first is, when you think of the word punchable, who's the first face? Whose face comes to mind? I can't tell you that. I can't say that out loud. Why not? I'd be in big trouble. Nobody's listening.

No, they're definitely listening. I can tell you that for 100% fact. They know who they are. I can't say it. They know who they are. Yeah. Okay. All right. We'll switch that then. When you hear the word successful, who's the first person that you think of? I think of, there's a guy I recently met. His name is Mark Bustos. B-U-S-T-O-S. He has an awesome Instagram account. He's a very high end hairdresser in New York. He works at like a top salon. And on the weekends he goes and he cuts the hair of homeless people around New York and he records it and he writes about their stories. And I think it's so amazing that he's at the top of his game,

you know, as a hairdresser working with celebrity clients and things like that. And then on the weekend, on his one day off, he goes around and is of service to people who ordinarily would never have the chance to get their hair cut, especially by somebody like him. So I think he's a great guy. That's amazing. How did you come across him? Um, I, you know, I heard about him at that salon and then I saw him on Instagram and then I just started seeing news article after news article about him. And it turns out, you know, he's a pretty big thing. His story got out and I'm so glad it did. That's amazing. I'll have to check it out. What book or books have you given out most as gifts besides your own? Within 10 seconds, this author will tell everyone in the world that they just came out with a book. The next question is, oh, do you have a copy? Oh, as a matter of fact, I just happen to have 10 copies on my back right now.

Well, it's kind of like What About Bob? I don't know if you remember. There's a scene in What About Bob, which I appreciate more every year as just a work of genius. But there's a part where, oh, why am I blanking on the actor's name? But the psychiatrist is in his office in New York, and he's like, there's a great new book that just came out. And he's like, ah, let me see. And it's a shelf, all of his one book with the spines facing out. And he's pretending to look, he's like, let me see. Ah, yes, here it is. And he pulls it off. But anyway, I digress.

So I'll give you two favorite books that I really love. One is called Mindless Eating. It's amazing. It's a book about food, but it's actually about psychology. And we all eat and we all think we know why we eat what we do. But the answer is most of us have no idea. And if you can understand this, you can understand so many other parts of why you act the way you do. So that's number one. Number two is an old throwback. This is a book, I believe from the early 20th century. It's called the Robert Collier Letterbook. And it's an amazing book on copywriting and really how to understand human behavior and human drive. And it has famous ads from many, many decades ago with an explanation of why they worked. I think it's really powerful. And those lessons are timeless. People will never change. These lessons will never change.

It's amazing. I'm astonished I've never heard of that one. At least for a period of time, I kind of fashioned myself an astute student of copywriting. That's very cool. Glad to have a new one. If you also on the book subject, if you were to take, let's just say a handful of 30 year olds who have had a bit of success, you know, they've been out in the world for a while, decently intelligent, and you're going to receive 10% of their future earnings, but they're going to become entrepreneurs for the

first time. What books would you give them? If you had, if you could only give them three books, what books would you give them? Oh boy. Let me think about that. I can tell you the areas that they would be in. So one of them would be Age of Propaganda by Pratkanis. And this is a cousin, you could say, related to the book Influence by Cialdini. Absolutely. Many people have heard of. The Age of Propaganda is less known. That and his other book, Social Animal, are outstanding books on human behavior. And it's interesting that so many of us focus on our technical skill, but ultimately being able to understand why we do the things we do

and why other people do the things they do is so much more powerful. So those would be two of them. Those are psychology books. And as for the third one, I'm going to have to think about that. Okay, we'll come back to it. Now, I don't want to let you off the punch question so easily. So I'm going to change it. When was the last time you were punched in the face? Indian people don't get punched in the face, dude. Just too fast? They don't get in fights. We're doing spelling bees. We're not getting in fights. Like you're like the Mr. Jock. All right. We don't, we don't do that. I know you, you know, we were sitting there studying three hours a day. All right. All right. There's a, there's actually an amazing, if, if, uh, for you people out there

who, uh, self-identify as Americans, Americans, check out a documentary called 2 million minutes. And it, it basically compares high school students, a handful in the U S a handful in China and a handful in India. And it will just like strike terror into your hearts. It's, I mean,

it's insane how intense the students are who are profiled from China and India. It's just like an Olympic training center of spelling bees and music and so on. It really made my jaw drop to see the discrepancies. Awesome. Thanks for the rec. Yeah, really, really pretty wild. Speaking of documentaries, do you have any favorite documentaries that you can recommend to people?

Yes, the classic one that I refused to watch for so many, for like a year, and then finally I did was Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Oh, so good. I mean, so good. And look, the lesson behind it was if everyone tells you something, it's probably true. I remember one day I was getting out of the shower and, you know, I had no music. I didn't feel like listening to it. And I just put that thing on. It was on Netflix. And within 10 minutes, I was transfixed. And so my thing is, if everyone tells me,

it's probably true. And it was amazing just to look at the level of almost obsessive focus on mastery of just one thing, like 10 years to learn how to make rice. I don't want to do that, but I want to learn about it and maybe do it for my own life skill. What was your favorite part of that movie? I have one particular scene that jumps to my mind. What, what, uh, do you have a particular part in that movie? Yeah, there's two. The rice thing was a revelatory for me because I mean, I thought I knew what it takes to be good, but he showed me what it meant to be great. And 10 years before you get to touch the rice,

that was astonishing to me. The second thing was Chef Giro, he finds out if you're right-handed or left-handed, and that way he can serve the dish appropriately for you. That's a level of detail that I think we don't see too frequently in our day-to-day lives. And yet at the highest levels, it's just routine. And it just opened my eyes to what could possibly be. Yeah, it's so amazing. Of course, my first real overseas experience was a

year as an exchange student in Japan and have a long-standing love affair with Japan and just endlessly fascinated by the culture and go back often. And every culture has its very weird and in some cases unappealing parts, but Japan is a very eclectic mishmash of sort of absorbed influences and very old traditional influences. I went to his younger son's sushi restaurant and we went extremely early and we got to spend about an hour and a half, just us or four of us with him. And I was the official translator. It was, it was just a fantastic experience. And you mentioned the left and right-handed. I don't know if you recall that the youngest son's sushi restaurant is an exact mirror image of his father's sushi restaurant because one of them is right-handed and one of

them is left-handed. And the scene in that movie, there are two that sort of stood out, but the one that really stands out is when a customer comes in and is asking what else they have. And he's asking, do you have appetizers? And he says, no, we don't serve appetizers. He's like, do you have this? And he's like, no, we serve just sushi. That is it. And very unapologetically. And if you want to talk about someone who just gives zero fucks about the scaling a business, I mean, he could have a hundred seater restaurant and it's like 10 to 12 seats in a subway station. Yeah. Just amazing. Any other documentaries? None that come to mind. That's, that's my favorite. James Bond or Jason Bourne? Jason Bourne. Why? You know what? I think by the time I was born and watching James Bond movies, it was, I had missed the decades of James

Bond allure and Jason Bourne's just cool. Yeah. I mean, he's the best. He's just a cool guy. I love it. I think I identify, I aspire to have all the skills of Jason Bourne, but I most identify, I'd say at least once a week, I feel like he did in the first movie when he has his outburst in the car. And he's like, I don't know who I am. I can't remember what happened. I don't know why I'm here. I think that's primarily why I identify with him so much. Love it. Dogs or cats? Neither. Neither. No way. Explain. Well, when I was a kid, my sisters wanted a dog, but we couldn't get one because my dad's allergic to dogs. And then seven years later, we found out he's not allergic at all. He just doesn't want dogs.

And I was like, I applauded. I was like, this is the longest lie I have ever heard. It was beautifully executed. And I can't wait to do that to my own kids. But why don't you like pets? Why do I want them? I mean, I just never grew up with them. They seem like a lot of responsibility and work.

I mean, I don't need the love of a dog or cat. Cats don't even love. I don't need the love of an animal in my life. So I'm good. It's kind of like, uh, I see these dogs. I like watching them on the street. I like watching them meet. I have a intellectual curiosity in them, but I don't, you know, I'm good. You know, you mentioned, uh, it's not weird if you didn't grow up with pets. I mean, I don't think it's, it's an unusual response. I think a lot of Americans grow up with pets. I grew up with two dogs and four cats. Uh, I'm very partial to dogs and, uh, you might recall, well, I've had a number of tweets and Facebook posts, uh, particularly if I've had a bit of wine and I'm fully aware that I'm somewhat intoxicated when I put these out. That's part of the fun that kick up a big fuss. And, uh, you know, as a friend of mine put it, I grew up with four cats. Look like cats are fine. I just prefer dogs. And a friend of mine

said, you know, a dog is a pet and a cat is an animal that happens to live in your house. And I put out a tweet that was, if your cat were 70 pounds heavier, it would kill you in your sleep. And people did not respond very well to that. You know what? I'm going to echo what you said about Americans loving their animals. Because I used to do this segment on ABC. And I had done it so many times that at a certain point, you know, I had a good banter going on with the anchors and this and that. And I just started telling jokes.

Like, how many jokes can I tell before they kick me off this thing? And I started making some seriously, I mean, they were tasteful, but they were pushing the limit. The only time I received, ever, that I received hate mail from anything I said on that channel was one day I made a joke about pets. I come home, and like you said, you know, you wake up and there's like 5,000, you got a PR crisis. I open up my email and I'm like, oh my God. And I forgot, Americans love pets. I learned, let me just keep my mouth shut in the media. Except when I'm speaking on your podcast to like 4 million people.

Great, great job, Rami. So if you, let me rephrase this. So if you went to, let's just say China. I've eaten dog before. I had to try it. I was there. It wasn't delicious. I've had horse as well. It's a sweeter meat for a host of reasons. But if you had to eat a particular species of dog and you could choose on the menu, what would you choose? I don't even know more than one species. I only know like golden retriever. But if the question is, would I eat dog when in Rome, you know, I'll always try something once. Got it. As for what species, I don't even, I don't even know. If you put a dog in front of me, I would be like,

and you put like a German shepherd, I'd be like, oh, what a nice golden retriever. You're such a bullshit artist. You just called it a German shepherd. What has become more important to you as you've gotten older or less important? Let's just say in the last five years. Wow. More important is surrounding myself with beauty. That's something that I actually made it one of my resolutions this year. And I think I'm a pretty kind of like un-symbolic or direct guy. You know, I was the kind of guy when I grew up, I didn't have any posters on my wall. And when I had a cubicle, I didn't decorate it or anything. And I started to see the people, like artists especially,

that inspire me. And they're all about inspiration and beauty. And it could be beauty in the type of dishes they use or it could be in their apartment or whatever it might be. And I got inspired by that. That's become much more important to me, to be able to surround myself with beauty, with organization. It's changed my mind a lot. How has that helped you? How has that improved your life? It helps me look for subtle nuances that I didn't see before. So I walked into my, like an old apartment and it had no posters on the wall, no paintings, everything was just white

and everything was very utilitarian. And I thought of myself like that. Early on, I was one of those guys that said like, they should recognize me for me, not because of some clothes I wear. But I can appreciate the beauty and the work that went into that and the craftsmanship. So looking at Jiro Dreams of Sushi, for example, it just looks like a simple piece of sushi. But the amount of work that went into it is actually decades and decades of work. And so I would say with a little bit of time,

I've just come to appreciate that beauty more. What is the gaudiest thing that you have in your house? In retrospect, where you're like, wow, I was trying to figure out this beauty thing and goddamn, I got it wrong with that. No, no, no, no, no. I'll tell you the gaudiest thing that I love. All right. Yeah, let's go there. Okay. All right. So, um, you know, the one thing that I wanted when I moved to New York was home cooked meals and, uh, I don't cook and I used to have all these excuses. Then I started working from home and, you know, my mom's like, you need to, you don't cook. And I used to have all these excuses. Then I started working from home. And my mom's like, you need to cook. And I said, look, I'm mom. I'm not going to cook. Her response,

then you need a wife. I was like, mom, don't say that out loud. That's pretty sexist, OK? She goes, whatever. So she doesn't care. So I have a chef, which is for me, that's like one of the fortunate things that I've been able to do. Is that code for your wife? No, I don't know. Now we're getting into real trouble here. No, it's not, it's not a wife. It is a, it's a chef. So that's probably the gaudiest thing that I would say. Do you make your chef dress like the Swedish chef or like iron chef, like gold? Yeah, yeah. I told his chef to dress up in a skimpy apron. Oh boy, here we go. And the only problem is that it's a man, so it didn't work out that well.

It's like a 50-year-old Ukrainian guy. Yeah, yeah. The chef doesn't come into my apartment. He just delivers it. What is the best hundred dollars that you've spent in the last year? Bang for the buck stuff where you're like, God, I cannot believe it took me that long to do that. Oh, okay. Okay. All right. So in the last year, a second power cord, that was ultimate no brainer. I can't believe how resistant I was to doing that because it was just wasteful in my mind. So that's been amazing.

Back when I was first starting off, the best $100 that I ever spent was always taking people out to coffee, always. Emailing a lot of people. In fact, that's how you and I met. You emailed me and we went out to coffee and turned into a very long friendship. That was the thing. And I cannot encourage that enough to just take people out to coffee and turned into a very long friendship. That was the thing. And I

cannot encourage that enough to just take people out to coffee. It's the best investment you can make. What was your pitch? Because you and I have both commiserated about the lack of focus in most requests that we get via email. And I was like, Hey, I know you're, you're really busy, but would you like to come out to a few hours of coffee where I can pick your brain? And then maybe you can become my free full-time mentor for the rest of my life. That type of undirected email very seldom gets a response. So what were the emails that you sent? Or in retrospect, what is a good way to have coffee with people?

And what type of folks should you actually aim for? Great, great questions. And both of us had to go through the fire to learn this. You know, I think that if you're trying to meet President Obama, it's not going to happen. If you're trying to meet some NFL star, it's probably not going to happen. If you're trying to meet someone that was profiled a couple months ago in Fast Company or an author or a blogger that you admire, that's eminently achievable. What it takes is being direct and making it clear what you want. The classic mistakes people have are they start saying, hi, I'll make this short. And then like 18 pages later, they end it. It's like, so yeah, okay, I guess I went on too long bye and i'm like delete or you know they're they're

very transactional like ramit i'll buy you lunch and i'd love to get your advice about abcdefg and i'm like i could buy my own lunch dude and also i've written about this for the last 10 years so one of the things i think the best people do is they introduce themselves they find some kind of commonality, and then they make it clear what they're asking for. So it might go something like this. Hi, Tim. My name's Ramit Sethi. I'm a student. I just graduated from NYU. I've been following you for the last six years, and the best thing you ever wrote that made a huge difference in my life was the article on going from geek to freak. Here's my before and after photo. And I did that all because I

followed your protocol. I'm going to be in town for six days. I'm looking to decide between X and Y jobs. I know you worked at X. I would love to get your feedback. And if you have the time, I will come to you wherever you are, even if it is for 10 minutes or Skype or phone, whatever you prefer. But I can promise you that I'm going to take your advice and I will follow up with you to let you know what I decided. Like you have a chance with an email like that. And I even actually wrote an ebook about this, about my 50 best email scripts, 50 proven email scripts.com. And that was because I had seen so many bad emails, but also so many great ones. I think the ability to write a great email and connect with someone is a huge differentiator.

Definitely. I would add two things to that. The first is I genuinely feel that you will get a higher response rate from people if you do two things. The first is do not go after people who are currently in the limelight. If people are currently doing a lot of media, you're going to be one of many people trying to get their time and your chances go down. So find someone who was in the limelight maybe years ago, who's still very good at what they do. And maybe it's not a public figure at all. You know, don't aim for Michael Phelps if you're trying to improve your swimming. Maybe you should find

someone who was like a bronze medalist two Olympics ago. Guess what? They're still very, very good and a hell of a lot better than you are. So don't necessarily aim for the very top. Your response rate will improve. Secondly is give people an easy out. I paradoxically just find that the responses are better because there's still people who are a hell of a lot harder reach than I am. Right. So I'm, uh, I have a friend who knows Arnold Schwarzenegger. I'd like to interview Arnold Schwarzenegger on the podcast. Um, I believe he's actually listened to a few of

the episodes, but, uh, he's a hell of a lot more in demand than I am. And if I were hypothetically, I haven't reached out to him directly yet, but if I were to email him, I wouldn't say, thank you for your favorable response. I look forward to your favorable response, comma, Tim Ferriss. That shit drives people nuts. Don't assume anything other than they are busier, more important, more successful than you are. So you have to kind of have your hand in hand a little bit. And a better way to end it would be, I understand you have tremendous demands on your time. And if you don't have time to respond, no problem. But if you do, even a sentence would mean a lot to me. That is more likely to get a response because you're demonstrating a degree

of empathy and you understand that their inbox is more of a war zone than your inbox. Yeah. Let's dig into this for just a second. So when I used to email Seth Godin, this is years and years ago, sometimes I'd write this beautiful email and he would write me back one line. And I would kind of be like, that's pretty rude. In retrospect, knowing what, you know, I get over 1500 emails a day, knowing that he even sent me a response, I'm actually humbled by how he did that because I get lots of emails that I don't reply to. So Tim, what you were just talking about is know the power dynamic. When you're emailing someone busier than you, you better meet them where they are. You better work around their

schedule. You know, if someone emails me and they're like, I can meet at this time or that time, I'm like, what? So you have to know your power dynamic. The other thing is, we call this the close the loop technique. Once you meet with someone, so many people just disappear forever. If someone took the time to meet you, they actually want, they're invested in your success. So one thing I encourage my students to do is follow up with them two weeks later. Hey, you told me this. I dug in. I discovered you were right. And so I took your advice and I just wanted to thank you. I'll keep you updated a couple of months from now on how the new job is going. That's how you build a real relationship.

So let me add to that because you and I both love the wordsmithing and testing of things like this. So the first few years out of college, my entire job was to cold call and cold email CEOs and CTOs to try to sell multi-million dollar storage area networked systems. And I had to test a lot of different approaches. And I was nobody. I was as low as you come on the totem pole. I had a desk in the fire exit. I couldn't even back out of my desk. I'd like to do this weird like half ass cheek roll to get out of my desk. It was, it was as low as you get. And I think that a very good response after you've met with someone that, or a common mistake is the big, Hey, great to meet up. Cool. Like here are my seven follow up questions. Or like, I really enjoyed coffee. Would love to take you out to dinner so I can have my three friends join and they'd

really benefit from blah, blah. Do not follow up with an immediate additional request. Follow up, like you said, with, and don't, and ideally like give it a day or two. Respond and say, thank you so much for the time. Here's what I did. It had this result. It really means a lot to me. Hope all, you know, good luck with the project that you mentioned. All the time. Here's what I did. It had this result. It really means a lot to me. Hope all,

you know, good luck with the project that you mentioned all the best. And then don't hump their leg for a while, you know, give it a little bit of gestation. And the other thing that I would say is don't keep in touch just to keep in touch. These people are too busy for that. And I feel free to disagree with me or me, but do not just become a pen pal because you think it's necessary for them not to forget you. That is going to, in my experience, repel people because you're crowding their inbox with zero substance email. If I have a good experience with you, I will remember you. And worst case scenario, if you ping me two years later, the first thing I'm going to do, guess what, is take your name and your email and search my inbox to see what previous communication. If you were a dick who followed up 12 times after I told you I was sick

and on deadline and couldn't respond, I'm not even going to respond to you. I'm going to tell my assistant to decline. On the other hand, if we had a good exchange, I'll be like, great. And then I've done my due diligence. I've checked it out and I'll respond to you. You do not need to follow up just to keep in touch. And a great example of that is Jack Canfield, co-creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul. I invited him. I volunteered at a group called Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs, it's a mouthful, S-Vase, and organized an event, invited him as a speaker, developed a relationship with him that way just by helping to organize and inviting media and so on. And over the years, this was starting in 99, 2000, over the years, every once in a while when I had a very legitimate, and I do mean once

every few years, I would send him a philosophical question about a life decision. I would say, you know what, hi Jack, just as a say, you know, hi, Jack, just as a reminder, you know, this is me. I know you're super busy. If you can't respond, no problem, but I'm facing this one life decision. Here it is. I'm considering A or B. Here's my thinking on it. If you have any input at all, it would really make a huge difference to me. And, you know, I'm a young guy just trying to figure out what my next step is. And then he would respond. And again, very Seth Godin-like, usually in a short way. And I did not keep in touch, but I respected his opinion and knew that he was qualified to answer these types of life questions every once in a blue moon.

And then many years later, he was the one who made the introduction to the, a brand new agent who turned out to be my book agent and still is my book agent, who was the, one of the few people who had the confidence to sell the four hour work week after it was turned down, whatever it was, 27, 29 times. Right. But that was not because I stayed in touch for the sake of staying in touch. Sorry. This is like a very sensitive subject to me because so many people feel like, A, keeping in touch is the right way. So just crowding my inbox or anyone's inbox is the way to endear yourself to them. It isn't. And then secondly, they think that if someone says no, that you're going to ping, that you should ping them another 30 times. And I think that you need to recognize when someone is saying no, because your pitch isn't

right. When someone is saying no, because the timing isn't right and i think it's very important to to learn to discern those things right so if you ping someone like i've i you know i have i've lyme disease right now and i'm on massive antibiotics i'm i'm hugely backlogged because i've been uh you know i took a week away from everything to focus on medical treatment. And there are people who just don't hear that. They're like, oh, I just need to be persistent. Let me send the same eight emails. And I'll give Tim 12 hours to respond,

even though his autoresponder says that he's on a deathbed. And I'm going to follow up with like, hey, just making sure you got my email 12 hours later. Don't do that stuff. It's just sort of a fundamental playbook. Anyway, I should check out your email scripts because I really feel like 10 to 12 points with best practices with this kind of stuff from people who receive thousands and thousands of emails would be really, really helpful for those people interested. I'm not hiring anybody right now, but if you want to see how I hired someone who started off as one of my readers named Charlie Hone, he's done a lot of interesting things.

Now, I wrote a post called, or he wrote a post actually called lessons learned or 12 lessons learned marketing the four hour body. I think it is. If you search anything along those lines, it'll pop up. And I explain how he developed, how we developed a relationship and how he approached it. I think that's a pretty good model actually for getting the attention of busy people. Absolutely.

Cool. Good, sir. You've been very generous with your time. I don't want to chew up your entire evening. Let me ask one more question and actually two more questions and then, and then we'll put it to bed. The first is following up on the question of books.

You're taking 10% of future earnings of a small group of decently smart folks, 30 years old or 25, doesn't really matter. And you have to give them a handful of books. You mentioned The Age of Propaganda, Social Animal. What other books would you give them before you bid them farewell and good luck? Oh, you're coming back to this one, aren't you? I am. Okay.

Boy, that's a good question. All right. So we talked about psychology. We talked about copywriting. There's a book, boy, you're putting me on the spot, but I'm going to tell you the book that's coming to mind for me right now. Sure. And it's a book I wish I had written, and it's called Never Eat Alone. It's by Keith Ferrazzi.

It's all about networking the right way, meeting the right people. And notice that the books I recommended were not books on corporate strategy or monetization or traffic analytics or whatever. They're books about stuff that never changes. Right. Principles. That is how people think, principles, how to help people first rather than ask them for something. And I think all those three books would be amazing over the long term. Do you have a favorite biography or favorite biographies? Yeah, I do. The favorite one I read, I've been reading it for, I think it's probably 20 years

now. I reread it every couple of years, is the biography of Lee Iacocca. Really? Yeah, it's outstanding. One of the things that I remember, and there's so many, is he said when he would be listening to someone, he'd say, you know, I don't want to get persuaded by the sweetness of their voice. So he would always say, write it down. And there are a lot of people, as you grow your business or grow in your career, there's a lot of people who are really verbally persuasive. And the principle there, the point of that is, you don't want to be seduced by something in the moment, whether it is buying a house because of how beautiful the weather is or whatever. You want to see it as objectively as possible. So put it on paper, take a minute. Most things do not need to be rushed. There's one other

biography, What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School. That sounds like a really gimmicky book, but it taught me so many amazing things about business by Mark McCormick, and I can't recommend it enough. Brilliant. Well, in closing, this is the last question. Where can people learn more about the incredible Ramit Sethi and any parting advice for the listeners? They can find out. I set up a special URL actually for people who are listening. So it's IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com slash Tim. Again, it's IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com slash Tim, T-I-M, and put together some cool stuff to give away for people. And, you know, parting words are just,

look, it's a thrill to talk to your audience. I've been, I've written a couple of things for your site. I think you have some of the most engaged, amazing readers and listeners on the planet. So it's my pleasure to help as much as I can. Thanks, buddy. Well, it's always, it's always fun to hang out. Hopefully we'll be able to share some wine in the not too distant future and the next time you come out to sf give me a ring i've i found a fantastic russian bath so we can uh we can continue our uh long-standing bromance and uh and i appreciate you making the time man thank you very much all right. I'll talk to you soon. Bye. If you want more of The Tim Ferriss Show, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or go to 4hourblog.com. F-O-U-R-A-T-O-U-R-B-L-O-G.com.

Where you'll find an award-winning blog, tons of audio and video interview stories with people like Warren Buffett and Mike Shinoda from Link Lincoln Park, the books, plus much, much more. Follow Tim on Twitter. It's twitter.com slash tferris. That's t-f-e-r-r-i-s-s. Or on Facebook at facebook.com slash timferris. Until next time, thanks for listening.