75 Ramit Sethi on Building an Empire, Powerful Habits, and the Art of Becoming the Best

Ramit Sethi teaches people how to be rich. In this podcast I ask him about the hobbies and moments that shaped him to his success today. How to hire and run effective teams that build your business. How to spend like a millionaire but save like an all-star plus much more. Dive in and check out lewishowes.com/75 for more Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 75 with Ramit Sethi.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur, and each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  What is up, greats? Thanks so much for tuning in today on the School of Greatness podcast. With me, your host, Lewis Howes. I am back from Uruguay, from Brazil, from the Pan American Championships, and I got a couple shots to get ready to go for my trip to Ghana in a couple of months. I'm going to a trip with Pens of Promise to check out how they're building their schools over there in Ghana. And I got a couple shots earlier this last week for the malaria. You have to get shots in order to get a visa to go over there because the malaria is pretty bad right now. So I get a couple shots, and little did I know that three days later, after the shots, I actually got a pretty bad fever, and I was out for

• 1:17Lewis Howes?

  about two days. I could barely walk. I was sweating a lot. I was really sick. And I realized that I wasn't taking my insurance policy, basically my supplements and the nutrients that I needed for my body to stay healthy. I thought that I was just going to be invincible because I haven't gotten sick in a couple of years. And I wasn't taking my vitamins that I take from Whole Foods, and I wasn't taking my on and supplements that really feel like give me the energy and the nutrients I need throughout the day. So not necessarily blaming getting the fever from not taking my nutrients, but I definitely think that if I would have, I may not have gotten sick or has been that bad. So our next guest today

• 1:58Lewis Howes?

  is the one and only Ramit Sethi. And this guy is a champion of life and business. He is incredibly smart, incredibly wise, and one of the most consistent

• 2:10Lewis Howes?

  Dedicated entrepreneurs I've ever met and know. He's really doing things differently than everyone else that I've seen online. And he has a team of individuals that support his vision, his purpose, and he's literally just dominating. So I'm very excited to welcome my good friend. We have an amazing conversation here. I really think you're gonna like what we talk about and what we tap into in this interview and in this episode. As I asked some questions for Ramit that I don't think he's ever been asked or ever answered before. So I think you're gonna get a little bit of a different side of Ramit than you've probably ever experienced him for those that already know him. And for those that don't know him, you're in for a real treat.

• 2:51Lewis Howes?

  He's a New York Times bestselling author and runs the site, Iwillteachyoutoberich.com. So let's go ahead and dive in with the one and only Ramit Sethi.

• 3:19Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness. I am very excited for today's guest. He is my brother from another Indian mother, Ramit Sethi. What's up, my man? How you doing? Doing well. I'm, I'm super pumped. You know, we've been friends for a number of years. I don't even remember the first time we met, probably back in 2009 or 10 or something when I moved to New York City. But you are one of the most inspiring guys that I know. And not just in building a business online and showing, teaching other people how to do that. But just in general, you know, all of our conversations late night in New York City at some crazy restaurant is always a lot of fun. So I want to bring that fun to my audience on the School of Greatness.

• 4:02Lewis Howes?

  And they've actually been requesting you for a number of months. So very pumped to finally have you on. Yeah, man. Very pumped. So I want to just kind of talk about a number of different things. About your life, your experience with building businesses. I know you started a couple of companies. You raised money and you started a blog called Iwillteachyoutoberich.com. I think back in 2008, right? Or 2007?

• 4:29Speaker 01

  2004, actually.

• 4:30Lewis Howes?

  2004. Wow. But it really started to evolve, kind of, I would say 2007, 2008. It started to take like a different shape.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 4:39Lewis Howes?

  Right. And you came out with a book, New York Times bestseller called I Will Teach You To Be Rich, which at the time, I read your book and I was in debt. And then three months later, I got out of debt by following exactly the, I think it was a six-week like plan, or six-week, six-step plan on getting out of debt. And I pretty much did exactly what you said and it worked. So for everyone listening, if you don't know Ramit yet, make sure to check out Iwillteachyoutoberich.com. Check out his book. He's got a number of great products, courses, Earn 1K, Zero to Launch. And we can talk about some of those. Find Your Dream Job, lots of different cool things. We can talk about more at the end, but I want to dive in and really learn about kind of how you got into all this in the first place

• 5:24Lewis Howes?

  and why you started to do what you're doing at I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's kind of weird because you wouldn't imagine a 17-year-old to be like, "Yeah, I want to dive into the world of personal finance. It's awesome." Nobody does that. So I'll tell you what originally got me interested in psychology, money, and ultimately behavioral change. I came from a pretty big family, middle-class family. My mom was home with four kids and my dad worked. And my parents, who are immigrants, they said, "Look, you're going to go to college, but if you want to go, you have to get scholarships because we don't have the money to pay for it." Okay, so I was like, "Cool." And I'm a, I'm kind of a nut in the sense that I love systems.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  And if I'm going to do something once or twice, I want to just systematize it so I don't really have to spend that much time doing it again. So I built a system to apply to about sixty-five or seventy scholarships. And I ended up making it pretty easy for myself. Like by the end, I was writing one scholarship application in about an hour. So it was going pretty quick. And I remember getting the first scholarship check. It was for, I believe, two thousand dollars or a few thousand dollars. And they wrote that check to me. And in ninety-nine, two thousand, I turned around and invested it right in the stock market.

• 6:47Lewis Howes?

  So they didn't, they didn't write it out to the university you were going to?

• 6:50Speaker 01

  That's what they usually do, but for some reason, they sent it directly to me. And, you know, I guess, well, most kids would have just blown it. And like, I was pretty nerdy, so I was like, let's invest in the stock market. That's awesome. And I lost half my money right away. So, so that was when I said, man, I better learn how this money thing works. And I spent the next two, three years learning about money. I read all the books, I read, you know, all the magazines and watched a lot of TV shows. But ultimately, at the same time, I was interested in psychology and behavioral change. Why do we say things like, yeah, I really should go to the gym, but then we don't go? Why do we tell people, oh, I guess I spent that much last month, but we don't do anything about it? And so I started combining these two things. And I looked around at all the advice that was out there.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  And so much of it was just complete BS. It was like that old book, The Emperor Has No Clothes, where everyone is telling you, keep a budget, stop spending money on lattes, you should just be happy to have a job. And I was like, none of this is true. My friends didn't want to keep a budget. Uh, I buy as many lattes as I want. What I learned was you can spend your whole life focusing on trying to optimize one dollar here, two dollars there, or cut back on fifty cents everywhere. Or you can just focus on the five to ten big wins in life. You can increase your salary, you can negotiate a raise, you can optimize and automate your money. And if you do just those five to ten things, like be in a, in the great relationship with the right person,

• 8:19Speaker 01

  the rest of life becomes really simple. Like if you want to buy a diet Pepsi or an appetizer or a latte, you can buy a hundred of them. It doesn't matter because you negotiated a fifteen thousand dollar raise. So that's how I got interested and initially started. It was all about psychology and behavioral change for me and behavioral change for the people around.

• 8:40Lewis Howes?

  So for people that are trying to, um...

• 8:44Lewis Howes?

  I guess they're they're on a budget right now where they're they're in debt so they're trying to get out of debt. You don't really recommend, okay, let's get you on a budget and start cutting back here and there. Or let's more focus on how you can earn more. Or do you do a combination of both? Is it also, okay, don't spend like a crazy man or a woman, but also, you know, enjoy the things you like and let's focus on making more money? Or is it one or the other?

• 9:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you you know, having gone through the program that it's a bit of a different approach. The typical approach is sit there, write down every single thing and then and then they just give you a list of stuff to cut back on. Cut back on cable, cut back on cellphone, cut back on appetizers. And you can do it, you can do it for a week, you can do it for two. But if you just take an honest look at your own behavior, how long has that really lasted? So I have a different approach. Most people talk about, no, no, no, no, you can't buy this, no, you can't buy that, no, don't even think about a vacation. I actually believe you should spend extravagantly on the things you love as long as you cut costs mercilessly on the things you don't. And very few of us take the time to admit what's important to us. So a lot of my students, they come to me, they're like, you know what?

• 9:52Speaker 01

  I love shoes, like I I love buying $500 pairs of shoes. I'm never judgmental. That's awesome. You want to buy a $500 pair of shoes? Awesome, let me show you how to do it. Some of, you know, I know a lot of guys who are into different types of like, they'll go out, they'll buy a $15 cocktail and they'll buy a bunch of them at night. There's and you know what happens? Most of the experts just finger wave and say, don't do that. We have to turn into $180 over the course of 30 years. It's like, look, we don't want to live like poppers. We want to go out with our friends, we want to go to a nice restaurant. Like when you and I hang out in New York or LA, we go out, we have a good time.

• 10:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  But we need to make sure that our money is automatically doing the things it needs to do. So it's all about being realistic and using psychology and automation to make your money and make your life do the things that it should do.

• 10:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, because, you know, if we're holding back all the things we enjoy spending money on or doing because we're not spending the money on it, then we're probably to be like unfulfilled our entire lives because we're like have to hold back and can't splurge on the things we love. And the thing that I liked about what you really set up for people in the system is If you want to get out debt and you want to make sure you're saving and have like money in the future, then automate it and put it into, you know, don't even look at it. Every month, you know, the $200 comes out to pay off your credit card bill. And then another $200 goes into this IRA and the savings account or this mutual fund, or whatever it is they're putting it into. And I did that, I guess, three, four years ago, whenever it was, maybe five years ago. And now I have like, I don't even know how much money I have in my account right now.

• 11:26Lewis Howes?

  I could probably look at it, but it's $200 every month has been going to like this account and $200 in another account. And I don't even know it's gone, which is the cool thing. And I can continue to splurge on the things that I love and the foods I like and, you know, travel. And it's, I feel great as opposed to feel negative for taking an action that I like to do.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I'll just, I learned that none of us wants to be a financial expert. We just want our money to do the things it's supposed to do and then get on with life. And too much of the advice out there was all about spending 20 hours a week looking over some Excel spreadsheet. Do you know that I spend less than one hour a month on my finances? And it goes exactly where it needs to go.

• 12:04Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  That, that's what I'm talking about. Living a rich life is not about burying yourself in Excel spreadsheets. It's about setting up something that runs automatically and then going out and living life.

• 12:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and I, I mean, I can't recommend your book enough. So, you know, for people that want to really dive into that topic of just letting your wealth build for you and getting out of debt and, and kind of those systems, just go pick up the book. It's probably 15 bucks on Amazon or something. I highly recommend that. Now, what I want to talk about is something I haven't actually ever asked you, I don't think. And we've been friends for years, but what I want to know is, you know, I feel like I can learn a lot about a person when I know what their hobbies were as a kid. So I'm really curious to like, what were your guilty pleasures, your hobbies? The things that you like to do alone, the things you'd like to do with friends? You know, is there games you played? What was going on?

• 12:54Speaker 01

  That is a good, I've, I've never actually been asked that, so that's a great question. Well, first of all, I will tell you that.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  So my dad, who's an engineer, always wanted to get his son, his first son, to do this engineering stuff. So he would buy me Legos, he would buy me those building blocks, those Lincoln Logs, he'd buy me puzzles, and I hated them. To this day, I can't do puzzles, I can't do Legos. In fact, my niece and nephew always tried to get me to play with them, and I get so frustrated, I almost throw the whole bucket on the floor. And I can't do things like knots. Like, the other day, I had to put some, uh, I had to re-lace this pair of shorts I had with this comp- I could not figure it out. And I've just had to realize, that's something I'm not into, I'm not interested. What I did love, I always loved reading. In fact, I was such a weirdo that I would read every book in our, we had a lot of books

• 13:47Speaker 01

  in our house, especially for my sisters, so I'd read all their books. And then I would, I have a, my memory's not so great, so I would forget, and then I would go back like a month later and read them again. The funniest thing is I've read every Sweet Valley Twins book. I love you, Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield. And, uh, and so I, so I would do that, and then I played, surprisingly, I played a bunch of sports when I was a kid. Um, track, tennis, soccer, and a bunch of other stuff. So, you know, all that stuff was, also bowling, for any suburban person out there. Bowling. Big time. Well, you know about that. We've been bowling. We've been bowling together. But, you know, for me, I'll tell you what's interesting. Uh, I loved the idea of a team sport, where there's camaraderie,

• 14:30Speaker 01

  and where you know you have to depend on the person next to you. Um, and I have to say, I kind of miss that. I don't do team sports anymore. I have my own team, and I will teach. And the thing that is like, the thing that takes me closest back to playing soccer, or something like that, was, like, you hand something off to someone, or they just pick it up, and they know exactly what to do, and they do a better job than you could have done. It's like watching a concert in action. And that's when, you know, you get that chill in your body. Watching everything around you work exactly the way it's supposed to. It's very inspiring.

• 15:04Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, interesting, yeah. Now, I like to talk about defining moments and I call them make or break moments. And I feel like there's probably a handful of different make or break moments in each person's life that you can trail back to and realize this is why they are where they are now. And my, just really quickly, mine when I was about seven, I was sitting on the couch watching a football game, college football game with my dad Ralph. And he, he was talking about the All-Americans that were playing and talking about how great they were. And he said, you know what, if you want to be an All-American, if you want to do anything, you can do that in your life. And at that moment, I decided I was going to be an All-American football player.

• 15:48Lewis Howes?

  And for the next 15 years, I dedicated my life to training to achieve that goal. And it kind of shaped my childhood and where I was going from that defining moment. Do you have any defining moments when you were, you know, five, seven, 10, 12, that kind of shaped you and you decided this is what you wanted to be at some point in your life? Or that's gotten to you where you are now?

• 16:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll give you one from when I was younger and one from pretty recently, actually. So when, when I was younger, it's, it's not as much a moment, more like a period of time. And I remember coming home from school and my mom would sit with me for two hours a day and we would practice spelling. If you ever wonder why Indian people always win the spelling bee, it's not just that we're genetically better. We just practice, we out-practice everyone else.

• 16:37Lewis Howes?

  Work hard.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I mean, that's the secret. The stuff you've been talking about, about living a great life is just about hard work. Of course, we all start at different levels, but anyone who makes it to the top has outworked almost everyone else. And so we would sit there for two hours and, and I just remember, you know, my mom came to the school and she asked, you know, are you doing a spelling bee? And they said, no, we're not planning to. And she was like, well, I'd like to, I'd like to make sure that the school does a spelling bee.

• 17:02Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Volunteer and set it up. And, you know, I, I did pretty well. I got to a certain level, but I remember every day, two hours, just practicing that. And In retrospect, you know, do I remember every single word and the spelling? No, but what I remember is the discipline. The idea that you don't necessarily have to like something, but you just do it anyway. And that over time, you know, when you first sit down, especially when you're a kid, nobody wants, kids are, you know, kids just wanna play. But teaching them that discipline really bleeds into everything else in life. And so now, I may not wanna do it, but I know that I have to. Yeah. And so it really has paid off. That was number one.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Number two was, you know, I'm like 5'11" and I used to weigh 127 pounds. We always joke about this. Right. I was a pretty skinny guy. And Was? I used

• 17:57Speaker 01

  And so I, yeah, so I used to joke about myself. I would say this thing, I think this is interesting for a lot of people. I would call myself a skinny Indian guy. Ha, ha, ha, it's like, it's like making a poop joke. It's like a cheap laugh. But I didn't realize until years later that that was a really negative example of self-talk. Because I would, I would basically, by calling myself a skinny Indian guy, I was absolving myself of ever working out or eating. I just thought it was genetic, which is like the number one stupid thing you can say about fitness. So, years later, one of my friends, the reason I started deciding to gain weight and learn how fitness worked was, you know, one of my friends challenged me,

• 18:39Speaker 01

  and I'm a competitive guy, and she said, "I bet in six weeks, I can lose more weight than you can gain." And I was like, "It's on." So, so from there, I, you know, I started eating and eating right and working out. And then I got a trainer, and then I started reading books. And over time, I actually gained, you know, 40 pounds on purpose, which took a long time. But the, the beauty actually comes back to the spelling bee of sitting there doing cleans and knowing that it might take you three months just to get five pounds more on your cleans or on your bench press. But knowing that, that's just how it goes, just being patient. And the beauty of the craft of getting better. It seems like we're all looking for that magic pill, that magic bullet.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  But sometimes it just takes pure hard work and showing up every day, eating right, sleeping, whatever it is, to make that next progress and that next gain.

• 19:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, definitely. I'm a, I'm a huge fan of discipline and I went to a private boarding school. So I know a lot about waking up at 6 a.m., making my bed, cleaning my room, having a room check, being in, you know, a dress code all day and then having a quiet, two hour study hall with my door open every night for five years. So I learned, I learned that at an early age as well. And it's definitely paid off for me at least. And if you guys go to iwillteachandberich.com, at least it may be changed at the time you're listening to this, but I'm looking at it right now. And Ramit has definitely transformed his body. If you look at him in this picture, he looks like a Bollywood supermodel. So.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  Is that such a thing?

• 20:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, sure. You're like Mr. Bollywood and it's pretty cool. So he's extremely fit now. And definitely the hard work has paid off. So very cool, man. So you, you ended up going to Stanford, right? And was it in Stanford or after Stanford when you started your first company and got funded for?

• 20:33Speaker 01

  I started a company while I was in college. It totally failed. It was, I started it with a couple of friends. And it was effectively like a Google answers for ambitious high school students. And we made every mistake under the sun. We didn't have a target market. We didn't have a monetization model. We didn't have anything. But it taught me a lot.

• 20:54Lewis Howes?

  What was the biggest lesson from that?

• 20:58Speaker 01

  I mean, the big, it's, it's almost like asking an infant, what was your biggest lesson when you first learned to ride a bike? They're just like everything. Putting my leg, how do I get my leg on the tricycle? So for me, it was, understand who your customer is and what do they really want? We had this idea, and I think a lot of first time entrepreneurs have this delusional idea that because we think something is important or we're passionate about it, that everyone else cares about it.

• 21:26Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  And that's just not true. People want simple solutions to complex problems.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  For example, I don't have a site called, I will teach you to be financially savvy, including psychology, automation, systems and discipline. It's called, I will teach you to be rich. And so, yes, I'm going to give them what they want. And I'm gonna also give them what they need. So I learned that lesson along the way. Then after college, I actually was gonna go work at Google. And I accepted their offer, but I told them like, I need a few months. They were like, yeah, take all the time you want. How about a couple of weeks? I was like, I'll see you guys in three months. I'm outta here.

• 22:04Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  So I took a vacation and during that time, I started working on this company on the side with a friend. It ended up taking off and so I decided to do that instead of Google. And that was an online collaboration company. And we ended up raising several million dollars. This is in Silicon Valley. The company's still there. It's changed quite a bit. It's an enterprise software company now. But while I was doing that, I was continuing to write, I Will Teach You To Be Rich. And you know, eventually the book came out and I decided to go full-time on this.

• 22:35Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm. Nice. What do you think is people's biggest mistake? Is it the idea they have for starting a business or in their company? Or is it the execution of the idea?

• 22:49Speaker 01

  Well, I think the number one mistake is just waiting for some day when it's all gonna work out. And I always think it never gets easier than now. You know, like you're never going to have less expenses. You're never gonna have less fear. It's always gonna be harder.

• 23:06Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  You know, you have mortgage, you have children, you have a spouse, or just less time. So the number one thing I hear from my students, and we have many, many, many students who have started businesses, gotten better jobs as a result of using my stuff. They just, they wait. And a lot of times, they, you know, I had someone who just emailed me about 20 minutes ago. He said, I've been reading your website and your emails for six years.

• 23:30Lewis Howes?

  Wow, and he hasn't done anything?

• 23:31Speaker 01

  No, he said, I finally used it and it was crazy. He got like a 35% salary increase.

• 23:36Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  Right? Just like one of my free tips. So a lot of, you know, I used to be really overbearing when I was young. So like, for example, my friends would be sitting there and after I, you know, when you know just enough about something to be dangerous? Like, it's like the people who start CrossFit and they've been doing it for like six weeks. And they're like, CrossFit is life. Or like paleo, everyone paleo. And they, they know just enough to be dangerous, but they're also in that really annoying phase.

• 24:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  And then you meet someone like you, who's been, you know, like a high-level athlete for, for over a decade. And if someone comes to you, you're gonna be much more patient with them. Cause you're gonna understand how really challenging it is to get into this whole world.

• 24:17Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  So, I was at that stage earlier on in college. And I would hear my friends complaining about getting an overdraft fee or a late fee or something. And I would jump down their throats. Oh, you need to do this, you need to do that, blah, blah, blah, blah. And their eyes would just glaze over. And over time, I learned to kind of slow down and listen instead of jumping down their throat and telling them what to do. I think that's been a big difference as I've grown up.

• 24:40Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. One of the challenges I hear from a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners is finding quality people to hire on their team. And to support them. And, you know, as you know, having an amazing, effective team is what gets you results. And it can make or break your business. So, how do you find, you know, A, players and leaders that are better than you at doing the tasks and the job that they need to do? And how do you manage your team to keep them growing your business with you?

• 25:15Speaker 01

  Well, my team has grown fairly sizable over the last few years. And I have team members all over the world, mostly focused here in the US. Sometimes we meet in person, we meet, you know, over chat, we do phone calls and all kinds of stuff.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  You know, I'm, I think that we all make these classic mistakes. So, one of the things that most entrepreneurs do is not want to hire anyone because they're afraid of losing control. That's a classic thing. They think that they can do it all. And when they hire someone, they almost always do it wrong the first time. I think it's important to admit and acknowledge, you are going to be wrong the first five times you hire someone. You're gonna be horrible at it. It's a skill. So, like, when I started, I had to, one of the first hires I made was an assistant. And I remember, I, I cheaped out and I went to hire someone who was in a different country. And I was paying something like five, seven dollars an hour. And it was a point of pride to me, which I look back and I'm so embarrassed.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  That I would literally tell my friends, oh yeah, like, I'm paying this person seven dollars an hour and, yeah. And they're like, oh, are they good? And I'm like, yeah, they're pretty good. And in my head, they weren't good.

• 26:25Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  So... Always, it always happens where you try to cheap out the first time you hire someone and you end up creating more work for yourself. And in my experience, over ninety-nine percent of people then point outwards and they say, "Well, that will never work. I tried hiring an assistant once. I'll just do it all on my own." Right. They have effectively created a ceiling for growing themselves and their business. What the point five percent of people who really learn that lesson is, "Let me do it the right way. Let me go find someone and pay them a fair amount for fair work." So now I have an amazing executive assistant. Notice I did not say a virtual assistant. I said an executive assistant. There's a huge difference. And I pay her very well.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  And so, a couple of things I would say for hiring. It's a skill. You suck at it when you first start. Okay, just admit it. It's, it's, you're never... It's true. It's so funny. I hear these people, they're like, "How do I hire like, I need to hire an A-player and they need to be doing..." Oh yeah, and then they also say this. "I want to hire someone who's gonna do my blog posts, my emails, they're gonna set up..." Video editing. Yeah, video. And I'm like, "Are you out of your mind?" You should, you can't hire, there, there is no one who's going to do that. And if they say they can, they are either delusional or lying. Right. So you want to start off with just a really focused task. And the final thing I do, which I would really recommend when you first start hiring. You know, I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  And I got burned. I think as you start to hire and fire, you, you get burned in every possible way. What would happen was, people would, you know, I'd hire them to be an assistant or something like that. And after, I'd look at them after a month or two and I really liked them. I liked talking to them and working with them, but certain things were not getting done. No results. No results. And I had the worst horror I could possibly imagine. I had an assistant, I haven't gone through many assistants, actually very few over the last ten years. And, but at this one point, one of my assistants had to leave to go to law school. And I hired another person. She was excellent. She seemed great. And she, however, she wasn't getting emails done. And so I finally had to have a talk with her. I said...

• 28:37Speaker 01

  She she actually contacted me and said, I want to work for you full time, not thirty hours a week. And I said, look, I I've been meaning to talk to you. I'm not even getting email responses within seventy two hours. And you're asking me to work full time. You need to do your job first. And so she came back to me the next day and she said, you know, Ramit, I don't understand why we're not getting along. But I quit. And she just quit point blank. Now, the worst possible thing an assistant can do is just leave. Right there without a notice because they're supposed to help me run my life.

• 29:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  So I later instituted something. It's just my twenty one day hiring procedure. When I hire someone, I tell them, this is what I expect. So for example, for an assistant, I expect a one hour response time during business hours. Um, I expect an acknowledgement if it's going to take longer than X time, blah, blah, blah. And I write it down and at the end of twenty one days, doesn't matter if I like him or not. I know that my weaknesses, I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt.

• 29:33Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 29:33Speaker 01

  So I just dispassionately objectively look at that piece of paper and I say, did they accomplish this?

• 29:39Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  And if they did, they're they're in. And if they didn't, I say, thanks, but it's just not a good fit. And they know all these things from day one.

• 29:45Lewis Howes?

  I think that's a great way of executing hiring someone because, you know, I've done. Uh, made a lot of mistakes as well, hiring people and it's still learning pro uh process for me. But I think a lot of, uh, at least for us, be myself, when I first started hiring people, you know, four or five years ago. It was like, I just, they, it's like, I felt like they should know what I already expect. Right. It's like, oh, I'm hiring you for this, so I, you should know exactly what I'm thinking and what I want done. And uh, I would have like resentment and there would be like this confusion. And then when you, I got clear, I'm like, okay, here's your uh description, here's what I expect. Here's what I want you to be doing. Here's what I want you to be acknowledging, kind of like how you you stated.

• 30:27Lewis Howes?

  Uh, you have a better system than me, but I I pretty much cover the same things. It seems like it's a lot more um. Efficient and you can you can gauge off of a results based on what's clearly communicated and expected. As opposed to just something up in the air.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, people want that clarity too, and they respect you for setting boundaries and for telling them what you expect.

• 30:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's like you're creating, uh, you know, discipline for them as well. People thrive off that discipline. Um, very cool. So.

• 30:56Lewis Howes?

  What I want to know is, you know, there's a lot of different things you teach about building a business online. You talk about making more money as a freelancer, you know, Earn 1K has been a very popular product that you've had thousands of customers with. And I know there's not one simple answer to this, or like one magic bullet, obviously. It takes a lot of consistency, a lot of dedication, a lot of hard work over time. But for people that are looking to build their business online, and they've got a website, and they've got some things going, what do you think is like, something that's necessary, that they have to have, in order to start generating more leads, and potentially more customers, if

• 31:39Lewis Howes?

  they do the right thing, but they want to get more exposure, what is something that they need to be doing? Is it creating more content? Is it the right content? Is it joint ventures? Is it overall branding and making sure that people, they look trustworthy? And obviously, there's probably a combination of all these things, but what do you think is necessary to kind of like, take the next step?

• 32:01Speaker 01

  In one word, empathy. See, there are tactics I can give you. I can tell you about Facebook pages, and I can tell you about optimizing your conversion funnel, but tactics change, and some of them extinguish over time. But what never changes, what has never changed for thousands of years, is true, deep empathy. And I'll explain exactly how this has been worth millions of dollars to us. If I were to ask you, the person listening, the business owner, what do your clients really want? How many of you would know what to say? Don't just come and say, they want to make more money. Why do they want to make more money? And they can make more money in a variety of ways. They can negotiate their salary,

• 32:42Speaker 01

  they can start their own business. Why do they want to make more money? What you discover is that most business owners have never really dived deep into what their prospects or their customers want. They've never really asked them. And if they ask them, they say things like, isn't it true that you want a course that solves your freelancing problems? Which is like, the most BS leading question of all. What we do when we start to really understand our clients, is we just start blue sky brainstorming. And we're really comfortable with

• 33:18Speaker 01

  Stereotypes, we'll make stereotypes about men and women. We'll make stereotypes about twenty somethings versus fifty somethings. We're comfortable doing that because we're gonna test it and actually find out if we're right or wrong.

• 33:29Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  We're typically wrong about half the time with these early-stage things, but that's the way it goes.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  I see a lot of business owners jumping into creating products and then they start marketing. If that is your goal, if that is your process, you've already lost, okay? It's like someone who, it's like an athlete who spends all their time, you know, online shopping for the coolest workout gear. And then they go to a workout competition with other people who've been training for ten years. You've already lost.

• 33:59Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  Okay, eighty percent of the hard work happens before you ever set foot in that room. Whether it's negotiation, sales, marketing, whatever. So we will often spend way more time than our competitors doing research. And it doesn't mean you have to have a hundred thousand data points. When I started off, we collected like twenty data points. But it means sitting there and really listening, not selling, just taking that off the table. We say, "Look, we're not here to sell anything. You literally cannot buy anything from me today. But if you can spare ten minutes, I would love to ask you about your hair." You know, so let's say you're creating a hair product, you think it's a good idea, and you're talking to women who have frizzy hair. Guess what? Women who have frizzy hair think about their hair every single day of their life.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  And they would love to talk about it, but no one really wants to listen. So you can listen to their hopes, fears, and dreams, you can listen to their complaints. And what we do, our goal is, by the time we really understand, it's almost like we're a spouse. You know, like a good husband or a good wife, they can read their partner's mind. We wanna be able to use the actual words they're using and understand them better than even they know themselves. And when you do this, the difference is literally worth millions and millions of dollars.

• 35:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, the research is definitely crucial.

• 35:16Lewis Howes?

  You know, what I'm interested in with you is why? I really wanna know why you're doing what you're doing still? And what inspires you to get up and be so productive at it every single day? Because you're one of the guys, in my opinion, are one of the top leaders in this industry and in this space, especially online. And why do you continue to do what you're doing? What's the end result for you or what's kind of the end goal that you have?

• 35:46Speaker 01

  Well, I always was fascinated by people who were the best, whether they were real or imaginary. So superheroes, like James Bond. I read a lot of spy books. Anyone, even athletes, even in sports that I don't care about, which is most, by the way. Someone, the other day, he emailed me, he goes, "Did you know that your presentation is right in the middle of the..." World Cup. MLB playoffs. MLB playoffs. Yeah, and I'm like, "Is that a baseball team? Football season? I have no idea what's going on. Do you think I care?" So I think that answered his question. But I was always fascinated with people who were the best. And I just, I don't know why, but I was driven to it.

• 36:29Speaker 01

  And I think part of it is my parents just, you know, like really, in typical immigrant fashion, emphasizing the importance of being the best. And then, after a while, I started to actually see the results of what it means to be the best. I think a lot of us, as my mentor Jay Abraham says, we have never actually seen what being the best means. We don't know what it means. We've never seen an example of it. Like, for a job interview, a lot of people think being the best means you spend 20 minutes doing a little bit of Googling, and that means you're the best. But really, being the best takes it to a whole nother level. It means you walk in the room, you already know the person who's interviewing them. You can ask them how their daughter's doing. You say, you know, "You've read every interview with the CEO of that company."

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Most of us don't have an example of excellence. So what happened was, like, I interned with Seth Godin. He's the best, okay, in his field. And I saw, not only was he intrinsically motivated to be the best, but because he was the best, he started getting the best stories sent to him for free, the best invitations. In other words, it's hard to get to the top, but once you get there, you can stay there a lot easier than having to climb up that wall again. So at first, I was just kind of like interested, but then I realized, "Man, if I'm gonna spend eight hours doing something, I might as well spend 15 hours and be the best." So it's just partially out of inspiration, partially out of laziness. I guess you could say.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  And then, you know, over time now, like, for me, I have to say, like, okay... If you were, if someone told you at 10 years old, Louis, tomorrow you're going to wake up, you're gonna pay your bills, you're gonna cook your food, you're gonna drop something off, you're gonna pick up your dry cleaning, you'd be like, this is impossible. You know, I can't, I don't even have a spatula, what are you talking about? But you do every single one of those things now. Why? Because you learned how to brush your teeth, and now it's kind of a given. It's just, you check the box, now you know how to do that. You know how to cook your eggs in the morning. For me, I always felt like I always wanna try to get better at something. So, I learned how to create online courses that sell. I know how to do that. I checked the box. What's next? So I told my team the other day, I said, look,

• 38:45Speaker 01

  if, if X years from now, we generate X Y percent of our revenue from online courses, I would consider that a failure. Because we already know how to do that, it's easy for us. What's next? So, I think, you know... What is next? Well, for us, we're looking at a lot of different areas. I think online education is amazing, but people want to live a rich life in a lot of different ways. Some of those are courses. But I had this funny experience one time. Uh, I don't really like to cook, and my mom is always like, "You need to learn how to cook." And I'm like, at first I would say, "I don't have any time." Then that became very obviously untrue. And her current response is, "You need a wife."

• 39:31Speaker 01

  But, uh, but one time, I remember, one of my students was, he heard this, and then he sent me an email saying, "Cooking is really easy, you just need to do this, this, this, this, this, this, this." And I said, "You misunderstand me." "I don't want to learn how to cook, I just want it done for me." And I think a lot of people don't necessarily wanna learn how to do something, they just want it done for them. So, there's a whole spectrum that we think about in terms of a rich life. You know, you could have someone teach you how to do X, Y, or Z, or you could just have them do it for you. And pay a premium for it. Yeah, exactly.

• 40:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, cuz you pay a premium for someone, a chef, to cook for you.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  Which is exactly what I do right now.

• 40:09Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. Interesting. So what's next for you is expanding this business into teaching or doing it for people or having a better systems for people to do it for themselves or?

• 40:22Speaker 01

  Well, I think two main areas that we're looking, one is we're looking to go more broadly. So a rich life, you know, for now, we've taught about entrepreneurship. We've taught about careers. We've taught about psychology, but there's so many other parts of living a rich life. There's travel, there's fitness, there's cosmetics, there's so many things.

• 40:41Lewis Howes?

  Relationships, yeah.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  Relationships. I mean, there's so many things. We want to get into those areas that we know we are different than what else is out there. And then we want to go deeper. So like, like a very simple example would be a book. A book kind of gives you a how to, but then there are deeper levels. We have recently, we've released software to some of our students that actually does some of the stuff for them. And I'm really interested in looking at that. Ultimately, I just want to help you live a rich life. If it means making more money, if it means traveling, if it means being more productive. I think those are things I know a little bit something about, and I think I can try to help in different ways.

• 41:15Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. With, from what I've noticed, myself and some other friends, with the bigger dreams becomes bigger obstacles and usually opens up a can of bigger fears. So do you have any fears broadening this and starting and going into an, you know, an unpaved road, I guess, with your, your new business ventures or?

• 41:37Speaker 01

  Oh, man, absolutely.

• 41:38Lewis Howes?

  What are the, what are those fears?

• 41:40Speaker 01

  Well, I'll tell you that someone was asking me the other day, how's business? And I laughed because I said, business is good, but the more successful you become or the bigger we get, the, the more I realize how little I know. And the challenges I had when I was starting off, they were very simple challenges. How do I get a new client? How do I set up an email list? And at the time, they seemed like the world's biggest problems to me, but they were pretty simple, actually, in retrospect. Now, the problems are, they're like, I don't have those problems anymore. The email problem went away. But there are larger problems. And so definitely, I have a lot of hesitations, nervousness, even fear around some things. I mean, first of all, I've always admired serial entrepreneurs, people who

• 42:26Speaker 01

  Do one thing and then go and try something totally different. To me, that takes a lot of balls because you could coast. Like, I could have coasted on personal finance for the rest of my life. It would have been easy. But that's not interesting to me. I feel like, once you do something and once you put your mark on the world, what else? So, but when you get into some of these areas, you will inevitably fail. And then, what are people gonna say? Are people gonna think it's the beginning of the end, you jumped the shark, etc.? At every stage, I've had people saying that to me. And I've learned to really learn how to manage my own emotions in spite of all the naysayers, but the bigger you get, the more naysayers you have.

• 43:05Lewis Howes?

  Of course. Well, I could, I have one more question for you, and I could definitely go on and on about a lot of these different topics, so maybe we'll get you back on sometime in the future to discuss more. But I want to first acknowledge you for the amazing commitment that you've had over the years and being of service to so many people who have these challenges and have these problems and want answers for their life and for their business, their career, for their finances. So I really acknowledge you for being a source of information, a source of inspiration, confidence, and leadership to empower, that you've been empowering so many people to step up in their lives.

• 43:46Lewis Howes?

  And you've saved a lot of people's lives, literally, from helping them with their finances because they've been able to have control over something which gives them ease in the rest of their lives. So I wanted to acknowledge you for the amazing gift that you are to the world, Rameen, and I'm just so grateful to be your friend. And with the last question, which is what I ask everyone, it's, what is your definition of greatness?

• 44:13Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, thank you for that. You just made my day. You know, I think a lot of us can work alone, or we work with a few people, but you rarely hear the impact you have on the world, but it is nice to hear, you know, that people listen and they, that they're moved by what you do. So I really appreciate that.

• 44:31Lewis Howes?

  My pleasure.

• 44:32Speaker 01

  For me, the definition of greatness is becoming really good at something. Spending the time, executing.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  Showing up, getting really good at something, that's part one. But then going the extra step and part two is sharing that with the world. So if you get good because you're a weird seventeen year old and you finally learn about personal finance, it's one thing just to be good with your own money. It's a whole nother thing to turn around and have a like a drive, something inside of you that irrationally says the rest of the world needs to hear what I know. And I think all of us have a gift, something we spend our Saturday afternoons reading, something that we think about in the shower. And my definition of greatness is for everyone listening to be able to take that and know that it's amazing you've already become good at something. But the rest of the world wants to hear it.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  The rest of the world wants a leader and you could be that leader.

• 45:28Lewis Howes?

  So powerful. I appreciate you so much, my man, and thanks so much for coming on the show.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  Louis, always a great time. Let's do it again.

• 45:36Lewis Howes?

  Let's do it.

• 45:53Lewis Howes?

  And there you guys have it. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did enjoy it, make sure to go check out the show notes over at lewishouse.com/75, the number seventy-five. If you go over there, I'm gonna have all the links to Ramit's websites, to his social media, to his products. You can check out everything he's up to over at lewishouse.com/75. Do me a favor and share this episode with your friends if you enjoyed this. Just give it a quick tweet or Facebook share or like on Facebook if you did like it. And get the word out. More people need to know about Ramit. He's a quality individual and one of the brightest online marketing business minds that I know. So really spread the word about this episode.

• 46:36Lewis Howes?

  Whether you've been listening to the entire time since I've been launching the School of Greatness podcast or this is your first episode, go ahead and check out itunes.com/schoolofgreatness. And please leave us a review over there. The more reviews we get, the more exposed we get. We get on iTunes and it spreads the message of the podcast as well. I appreciate you guys so much for being on, for being active listeners and being engaged constantly. It means the world to me and I'm so pumped to continue bringing you awesome guests in the future. Stay tuned and you guys know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Great.