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- [Matt] Is it possible that nearly everything

you've been told about money is wrong?

From the messages we see in movies and music videos,

to the advice we get from our family and friends,

it's impossible to escape.

Everyone wants to give you their two cents on your dollar,

and most people have no idea what they're talking about.

Think about it.

Out of all the conversations you've had

about money in your life,

how many of them were with someone

who could confidently explain to you

the difference between a 401k and a Roth IRA?

People are constantly sharing myths

and misconceptions about personal finance

despite the fact that they themselves

are buried in credit card debt.

Instead of talking about asset allocation,

automation, and safety nets,

you'll hear them talk about discounts, credit card points,

and being frugal to the point of deprivation.

- Don't worry everyone watching and listening,

I'm not gonna tell you to cut back on lattes.

Buy as many lattes as you want.

- [Matt] That's Ramit Sethi, and he really loves lattes.

He's also the author of the New York Times bestselling book

"I Will Teach You to Be Rich."

- You can focus on five or 10 big wins in life.

Get a good job, negotiate your salary,

invest every single month automatically,

make sure you have a solid credit score.

Just get five to 10 things right,

you'll never have to worry about

the cost of appetizers or lattes again.

- [Matt] His approach to personal finance

focuses more on the big wins

than tracking every last expense,

and more on how to increase your income

than on pinching pennies.

- This whole part of the equation is missing in money.

All they talk about is cutting back.

I'm like what about the other side of the table?

You can earn more.

- I was honored to have a chance to sit down with him

to talk about how you might be able to earn more money,

create healthy spending habits,

and change the way you've been thinking about money

for your entire life.

Get instant access to the full 75-minute conversation

by becoming a member at patreon.com/mattdavella.

I hope you get as much value

out of this conversation as I did.

Why don't you just start out,

give me a little bit of an introduction

to the kind of work you're doing right now

and what you've been

up to lately. - Sure.

I decided years ago to take my college scholarship money

and invest it in the stock market,

'cause I thought that's what everybody was doing

in 1999, 2000.

I lost half my money,

and I realized I wasn't as smart as I thought I was.

So I started learning about money,

and at the same time I was learning about psychology,

and over time I basically got really interested

in learning how to change my own behavior with money,

with careers, and with negotiation,

and all kinds of parts of self-development.

So I started a blog called "I Will Teach You to Be Rich."

I was sober when I named that.

I don't know if I would use the same name again (laughs),

but started a blog, ended up writing a book

called "I Will Teach You to Be Rich,"

which became an instant New York Times bestseller,

and now we have 20 different courses on money, business,

psychology, and careers,

all different parts of living a rich life.

- A lot of people online in the personal finance community

like to talk about being frugal

and cutting down on every possible expense.

And I know this is something that you've been

going out against for probably 15 years.

- For 15 years.

I mean, how much tape do we have?

I'm about to go off on this frugality stuff.

- Yeah. - I mean,

the most classic thing is don't spend money on lattes.

Okay, everyone, first of all, don't worry,

everyone watching and listening,

I'm not gonna tell you to cut back on lattes.

Buy as many lattes as you want.

This is a fundamental misconception,

that if you cut back on $3 or $5 every single day,

that somehow magically, 200,000 years in the future,

you're gonna have enough money to live your rich life.

First of all, who wants to live like that?

Second of all, if you run the math,

that's not even that much money anyway.

$3 a day?

And third, it simply doesn't work.

People buy more coffee than ever.

I wake up in the morning, I want coffee.

What they ignore is that you can focus

on five or 10 big wins in life.

Get a good job, negotiate your salary,

invest every single month automatically,

make sure you have a solid credit score.

Just get five to 10 things right,

you'll never have to worry

about the cost of appetizers or lattes again.

- Are there some sacrifices that need to be made though?

Because, sure, while I love lattes,

I love going out for a cup of coffee every day

and I don't wanna sacrifice that,

can I apply that to everything in life?

Can I have it all?

- So I would love for people

to develop their sense of what they truly love

and what they don't really care about.

In my life I love convenience.

That's something that I call my money dial.

I can turn that spending way up.

So when you think about convenience for most people,

maybe they have a dishwasher,

maybe they send their laundry to be done,

or they have somebody maybe come

and help around the house once in a while.

I turned it way up.

I doubled, tripled, quadrupled my spinning.

I have a personal assistant.

I wake up in the morning,

my calendar's like perfectly organized.

It's like my art. I love it.

But my computer's five years old.

I just don't care about it.

When I bought a car,

I bought a Honda accord.

Again, don't really care about that.

We hardly ever eat out as a couple,

we just make food at home.

For a lot of people, if you ask them,

"What do you truly love spending on?"

There tend to be some clusters.

Wellness is one, and that could be organic meat,

it could be training,

it could be going on a retreat to Tulum, whatever.

Food, classic one.

Relationships is a big one.

So the point I'm making is ask yourself

what is the thing that I love?

And what if I doubled my spending on it?

Well, in order to do that,

which would give you joy,

you probably have to cut back

on the things you don't really care about.

And instead of just spending a little bit here

and a little bit there,

I'm a huge fan of going all in on one big thing

and then saying,

"These things are just not important to me."

- It seems like your definition of living a rich life

and the concepts in minimalism are very intertwined.

It seems like it's just like different words,

different ways of,

not even different ways of looking at it,

'cause essentially it's about,

when you talk about money dials,

finding what you value most in life,

investing in that, and then just letting the other stuff go.

- Minimalism and "I Will Teach You to be Rich."

We wanna find the things that we love,

that we value, that we care about,

and then, like you said,

we wanna let the other things go.

How you do that is up to you.

You can truly let 'em go.

In the book I talk about the F.I.R.E. community,

financial independence, retire early.

And some of these people choose to basically retire

with like a hundred or 200,000 bucks.

They retire in their thirties,

and they live a very, very simple minimalist lifestyle.

Very simple.

That's not for me.

That's not my style, but I respect that they have done that.

There's like the phat F.I.R.E. people

who choose to retire early,

and they wanna live in Manhattan

and have like a phat apartment and, you know,

send their kids to private school.

Maybe not also for me, but you can choose that.

What I want people to do is to decide

what their rich life is

and then use the money to fuel that.

And half the battle is really getting congruent

with yourself and saying, "What do I want?

Maybe I need to dream bigger on some of this stuff,

'cause I've been playing small,

but some of this stuff I just don't care about,

so I'm gonna get rid of it."

When it comes to money,

so many of us dream small, and we play small.

So we spend our time debating about lattes.

We worry about a small amount of debt.

But when was the last time we actually

lived a life of imagination where we said,

"Hey, what if I had $25,000?

What would I do with it?"

And if you have never even

thought about that for five seconds,

then how are you ever gonna know

what's exciting to you with money?

And that's why most of us dread money.

We don't wanna talk about it.

It's always something that at the end of the month

we look at our bills, "Oh, God, I guess I spent that much."

I wanna flip that, because "I Will Teach You to Be Rich"

is about saying, "Hey, money can be exciting.

Let's start with what I wanna do.

I wanna take a trip to Thailand,

I wanna stay in an amazing place,

I want to take a food tour."

Great. Let's start there.

And when you start with what you want,

then you can work your way backwards

to, "All right, how do I get there?"

But if you're stuck in latte land and you're stuck saying,

"I shouldn't spend money on this, and I shouldn't do that,"

you're never gonna get out of that.

- What about somebody who might say

"Ramit, that's easy for you to say.

I'm working two jobs, I'm $30,000 in debt,

I've got car payments, all this.

It's hard for me to even imagine a world

where I can get out of debt, let alone pay my bills."

How do those people,

the ones that are struggling the most live a rich life

and get out of debt and set themselves up

to be financially free?

- I'd ask 'em one question.

What's your debt payoff date?

Almost nobody knows. I get these emails every single day.

They're in small amounts of debt

or huge amounts of debt,

and I always say the same thing.

What is your debt payoff date?

What that means is what is the exact month

that your debt is going to be paid off?

If you know that answer, you're in really good shape.

Even if it's 5, 10, 15 years from now,

because it means you have a plan

and you're automatically paying it off.

But of course the vast majority of people don't.

They live under a cloud that's I'm in debt, I have...

Some of them think that it's existential

and they have $3,000 of debt.

I'm like, you could pay that off in a couple of months.

It's not that big of a deal.

Or maybe six months.

Some of them have significant amounts of debt.

But the commonality is

if you just have this dull throbbing pain

in the back of your head, "Oh, debt."

Suddenly you start to identify yourself like that.

You follow people on Twitter

who write these really depressing things

about macro economy and there's no way millennials

are ever gonna get out of debt,

you read subreddits where they talk about

everyone being in debt,

and worst of all, you don't make a plan.

What I want people to do is go to a debt payoff calculator,

you can Google it, and put in your amounts.

You'd be surprised that probably 80% of the people I know

who are in debt don't even know how much they owe.

So step one, find out how much you owe,

step two, plug it into a calculator.

You might discover that paying an extra 20 bucks

or 50 bucks a month can cut that down by years.

And then three, once you have a plan, it's like (exhales),

you have a big sigh of relief.

Now if you wanna take an extra job

or you wanna negotiate your rates,

or you wanna do X, Y, Z, you can affect that plan.

But until you actually have a plan,

you're just sitting here like,

"Oh, this is really depressing."

And that is the worst place to be.

- Well, I do have to personally thank you

for writing this book.

I remember getting this book.

I was $97,000 in student loan debt,

I had just bought a brand new car,

which was- - Wow.

- That was before I read the book.

(Ramit laughs)

And so at that point, I'm about

like $115,000, $120,000 in debt,

and it did feel overwhelming,

and it felt like there was just no plan.

Because a lot of times

people aren't really teaching this stuff.

It's not being taught in school necessarily,

if your parents are bad with money,

it's not being taught to you by them,

so you have to go out and find this stuff for yourself.

So I do wanna just thank you for that,

because it really set me on the right path

and helped me out a lot.

- Amazing.

- What is it about the book

and about these methods that work?

Because a lot of personal finance,

it can be driven on like just the numbers-

- Ah, lecturing you.

- Yeah.

But what I really loved about yours

was the more of an approach on the behavioral change.

- Yeah, I sit in front of a computer all day

and I get emails.

We have like hundreds of thousands of people

on my newsletter, and I love the emails I get,

but there's nothing like hearing one real person who used it

and hearing why you decided to start using it

and what you noticed.

Like, I love it.

This is the highlight of why I do what I do.

When I started writing this book

I was getting questions like "What's a 401k?"

Or, like, "I have $5,000 in debt,"

or "I have $5,000 in my checking account.

I don't know what to do with it."

And the typical things that people had heard about money

were lecturing, they were kind of depressing,

'cause it was like living a life of a monk,

which they did not wanna do.

Like, "I wanna go out with my friends.

I wanna pick up a round of drinks for them."

And also it's just confusing.

You're like, "Who do I trust?

Wall Street's trying to screw me,

but I don't even know how, but I know I'm being screwed."

And I have a soft spot in my heart

for ordinary people who want to do the right thing,

but the world is too confusing for them in personal finance.

'Cause I spent years learning this stuff,

and for the ordinary person, super hard.

You hear these phrases.

Expense ratios? What's that?

Backend load. Huh?

Even 401k, what the hell is that?

And I wanted to find a way to break it down for people

and not just focus on compound interest charts,

'cause we've all seen these charts.

It's like, "Dude, if you started investing at age 17,

you'd be rich by now."

It's like, yeah, well I'm not 17, and I didn't start,

so what do I do now?

I wanted to integrate the psychology.

And I think all of us, you and me included,

probably have something that we claim we want to do more of,

but we're not actually doing it.

I think for a lot of people it's working out,

for a lot of people it's money.

It might even be relationships for people.

And when I wrote the book,

I wanted to start in chapter one,

instead of saying, "Let's track your spending

for the last month, blah, blah, blah,"

People are like super...

They don't wanna do that.

They're like, "I don't know what I spent,

and also I know it was probably bad,

so I don't think I'll read this book."

I said "Here's how the credit cards are mistreating you.

Call these numbers, read these words off the page,

and you will get your fees refunded like magic."

And especially millennials, and especially in America,

everybody hates the phone,

so they were like, "Ugh, I don't wanna pick up the phone."

But they did it, they get their $37 fee refunded, boom.

They're like, "This thing works."

And for the first time,

they actually take control of their money.

Soon, by the end, they're negotiating $10,000 raises,

they are automating their money.

And I think what a lot of people would love to be able to do

as they learn in chapter five

is to spend one hour a month on their money, and that's it.

And it just goes where it needs to go,

savings, investments, and my favorite part,

guilt-free spending.

- So what are some of the updates to this book,

and what can people get out of it now

compared to maybe when I read it 10 years ago?

- So I was really proud that 95% of the investment material

stands the test of time.

In fact, 99%. This is stuff that's timeless.

However, there are a lot of things that have changed.

New tools, there's questions about robo-advisors, crypto,

I saw one of your readers ask about some crypto stuff today,

and better credit cards.

So I updated all of that to tell people

exactly the accounts that I'm using.

Also the worst accounts to avoid.

I name names, I tell people...

Can I name names right now?

- Absolutely, yeah. - Oh, thank God.

Okay, don't use Wells Fargo.

They are predatory pieces of shit.

Bank of America, you also suck.

They know that I don't like 'em.

I talk about them everywhere. They're the worst.

- Yeah, you're like on their hit list

or something? - Yeah.

- The anti-influencer list.

- I'm on the negative influencer list at Bank of America,

but they deserve it. - Yeah.

- And I have no financial ties with these companies,

but I wanted people to know exactly what I use,

because the fact of the matter is

most people are not gonna spend hours and hours

cross tabulating all these different accounts.

They're like, "Let me find someone who I trust,

and let me just see what he does."

So I talk about great accounts too.

For checking, Schwab Investor Checking,

Vanguard for investments, they're the best,

and there's a lot of good savings accounts.

In my experience, if I find someone I like,

like if I was gonna buy a camera,

I'm coming straight to you.

I'm like, "Dude, this is what I wanna do.

What should I get?"

And whatever you tell me, I'm like, "Done."

That's what people were looking for

when it came to the book.

So I updated the tools,

I updated lots of insights on money and psychology.

I'll give you an example.

Do you ever remember any conversations that your parents had

about money when you were growing up?

- A lot, yeah. - Really?

- I mean, yeah, yeah.

It wasn't always good.

It was always the conversations

around not having enough money.

- Do you remember any phrases that they said?

- "It wasn't cheap."

That was like when we got our Christmas gifts.

- Wow, wow. - "It wasn't cheap."

- And what did that mean to you?

- There was always,

it felt like we just didn't have enough money,

or it was, "How much did that cost?"

- Yeah. - Is a very big question.

- Yeah. - You buy a new computer,

everybody wants to know how much it costs.

It's like "The Price is Right in my house."

- Exactly.

And if you say the wrong answer,

for example, let's say you said it was 2,800 bucks,

what would the reaction have been?

- Oh, it would be in shock that you spent that much money

on something that maybe they didn't see the value in.

- Yeah.

And so, like, you did it wrong.

Oh my god, I couldn't have scripted this better.

This is amazing.

So growing up in that family environment,

the messages that you are receiving are

it's bad to spend a lot of money on things.

If I spend a lot of money,

I'm probably getting ripped off,

and frugality or low prices is the best value of all.

Now imagine for people who grew up,

I'm sure there are a lot of people watching

and listening to this, they're like,

"Oh, my mom and dad said that every day,"

or phrases like, "We don't talk about money in this family,"

or "Easy come, easy go."

Those things carry with you for 20, 30, 40 years,

and suddenly you're going to buy a car

and you really want one type of car, which you love,

but you say, you know, I don't know,

I should probably get the cheap one,

the one that you will hate every day

for the next 10 years while you drive it,

but you saved an extra $700.

Why? You just think that you did a rational analysis.

Really, if you trace it back,

it's the phrase you heard when you were eight years old

with your parents.

And so in this book, I show these crazy money messages

that we absorb from society.

And some of them are good, and some of them are bad,

and some of them are just appropriate for the time

but we're in a new place.

My parents were immigrants.

They came here, they needed to save money,

and that made perfect sense.

I still retain some of that frugality now.

But I've also turned the chapter in my financial life.

So now I don't want to be living the life

of what I was learning at eight years old,

I wanna be rewriting my financial story now.

So I added that to the book.

And for everyone listening,

if you've ever thought about your own money behavior

and you've ever wanted to have a magnifying glass on

"Why do I spend money this way?"

Or "How come I can't seem to stop feeling guilty

about spending?"

You will find the answer.

- The quickest way to pay off your debt

is to make more money, right?

So what are some of the approaches

that people can go about making more money,

say, as a freelancer,

and then also as somebody who's working a nine to five job.

What are these ways that people can make more money?

- Okay, first of all, I love talking about making more.

Do you know why most personal finance experts

never talk about earning more?

- 'Cause they don't know what they're talking about?

- They don't know how. - Yeah.

- That's as simple as that.

That's why this whole part of the equation

is missing in money.

All they talk about is cutting back.

I'm like, what about the other side of the table?

You can earn more.

So I have chosen to focus.

Yes, I manage my expenses,

but when it comes to managing,

I basically spend the same amount on most things,

except I have two areas that are,

I tend to overspend on 'em.

One is travel and one is clothes. Those are my two.

So I know that if I'm within these parameters,

it kind of flags it red or green.

Aside from that,

everything else is like pretty much taken care of.

If you want to earn more at your job,

there are some straightforward ways of doing it,

and then we can talk about freelancing, which I've done.

The typical way people think about earning more at their job

is they just wait to be given a raise by their boss,

or they kind of build this thing up in their head.

They're like, I'm gonna go in my boss's office,

give me some more money or I'm quitting,

and then of course the boss is like,

"Get the fuck out of here."

And then they don't know what to do.

They're like, ah. (Matt laughs)

Not a good situation.

A better way is to be really strategic about it.

So here's a quick suggestion

on how you can get large raises.

And this works very well.

I will routinely be walking down the street in New York,

people will come up to me,

they're like "I got a $16,000 raise

because of what you taught me."

So this stuff works,

but the magic is in the details.

So what you do, you send an email to your boss,

you say, "I would love to discuss

some of the projects I'm working on,

and I'd love to get some time with you."

Okay?

So you walk in and you talk to your boss,

you say, you know, "Here's what I'm working on.

I wanted to kind of sync up on my role.

My first question is what can I do to be a top performer?"

Your boss might be a little confused,

they might say this or that.

Doesn't really matter what they say.

You need to simply go back to your key message.

What does it take to become a top performer,

because I wanna exceed expectations in my role.

So by the end of that meeting,

you're gonna have three or four crisp things

that you walk out with.

Write 'em down.

For example, you need to boost conversion from 10 to 12%,

you need to hire X, Y, Z person,

and you need to do X, whatever.

Write it down and say, "You know what?

These sound great.

I'm really excited about 'em.

Now if I hit all these goals,

I'd like to discuss a compensation adjustment,

but let's deal with that later.

First, I wanna focus on this."

So the boss is gonna love it,

because you're coming in when everyone else

just floating along the river of work,

just showing up to work every day,

and you're saying, "What does it take to be the best here?

And by the way, I'm gonna help you,

my boss, exceed your goals.

Let me take it on."

Great.

So you walk out,

you think about how you're gonna execute on that,

you send an email saying, "Here's what we talked about,

compensation adjustment discussion later,

but for now, I just wanna work on these."

And the time period for this

is typically like six to 12 months.

So you're sending an email every one to two weeks.

Here's what we talked about, here's an update.

Now let's assume that you hit those goals.

If you don't hit those goals,

then maybe you don't deserve a raise.

But if you do, you set up another meeting.

"Here we are six months later,

I'd like to sit down again and update you on the goals."

You walk in, now this is the best meeting of your life.

You walk in, you say, "Six months ago,

we talked about X, Y, and Z.

Well, I'd like to show you a couple things.

I'm really happy."

Smiling. Boom.

"You talked about 10 to 12%,

we actually have a confirmed 13.3%.

I'm so happy.

You talked about hiring one person,

we actually were able to hire two people.

We've got a third on deck.

You talked about blank. Boom."

The boss is just loving it,

you're giving each other pats on the back.

Great.

You say, "You know what?

The other thing we discussed

was a potential compensation adjustment,

so I'd like to discuss that now."

The boss is getting a little nervous.

Whoa, whoa, what's about to happen?

But the boss has been updated along every two weeks,

so they know it's not a surprise.

Now you pull out your salary research,

which you pulled from salary.com.

You say, "Based on my role,

you know I'm currently paid 58,

for my role, it looks like I should be paid

between 63 and 67.

I'd like to have an adjustment

based on my performance

of exceeding these goals to $67,000."

Now let the silence fill the room.

Stop talking, just shut...

Follow my STHU technique, shut the hell up,

and let the boss think.

Boss is probably gonna come back and say,

"Look, I can't do 67, that's above your current pay grade,

but you have done a great job.

We can talk about 63."

Okay, so first of all, you just made 5,000 bucks,

but now you can have some negotiation.

You can use some of my videos

on how to actually go through this,

but you walked out taking a proactive role in your career.

You set a goal with your boss,

you confirmed it every step of the way,

and then you walked in and said, "This is what I'm worth."

That is how you negotiate.

It's totally different than what most people imagine,

and if you do that once a year,

you can probably do that consistently for your career.

It is incredibly empowering.

I hope everyone just does that one thing.

You will watch your career soar if it works for you.

- So if somebody's a freelancer

and they have their own business,

what are the ways that they can grow their business?

I know the common thought for most freelancers,

I would imagine, would be

"I need to go out and get more clients."

- That's classic.

And sometimes it's true,

but I did a lot of client work years ago.

There's like three ways to really grow your business.

You can get more customers,

you can raise the average order value,

or you can increase the purchase frequency.

That's like a very different way

of looking at growing your business,

because most people only focus on one thing.

The classic thing...

I know a lot of creatives, photographers,

writers, et cetera,

and they just go through this...

It's not even feast or famine,

it's like famine, maybe get a little morsel,

and then back to famine.

They're constantly dealing with low value clients.

So they're like getting 400 bucks here or 4,000 bucks there.

And they spend all their time just like chasing.

It's horrible.

Have you experienced this,

or do you know people like this?

- Yeah.

Early on, a lot of my friends were trapped

in the music video game, making music videos,

where historically, very low budget,

especially for the DIY guys,

people who work wedding films.

There's usually a certain threshold of where you can go,

and for me, I saw a lot of people doing that

and just kind of scraping the barrel,

but not being able to get out of it.

- Yeah. They're just in this vortex.

- Yeah. - Stuck.

It's like quicksand.

In order to get out of that,

you have to make some really different

and often difficult decisions.

And if you ask the average freelancer

who's stuck in quicksand,

"Would you like to, instead of charging 400 bucks

per client charge 4,000?"

They're like, "Yeah, I'd love that."

And you're like, "Okay, are you willing

to do things differently?"

"Yeah, of course."

And then you show them a couple things they need to do,

and they're like, "Fuck that.

I'm not gonna do that."

So what I would say is if you are in a creative industry,

know that there are people charging 10 times more than you.

Go find them, look at what they do, and don't scoff.

Don't D, disparage them, instead, get C, curious.

D to C.

Why is this wedding photographer able to command $15,000?

What do they do differently?

Let me look at their website.

Let me look at the way they talk about their services.

Let me see what they offer.

And I'll give you an example from a travel agent.

I recently went on a very long honeymoon, six weeks,

and I started researching travel agents.

Now first of all, have you ever used a travel agent?

- No.

- Who the hell uses a travel agent?

It's like so weird, right?

- Yeah, it's like the '80s.

- Yeah, exactly.

But this was a very long complex trip

to multiple continents,

and I was like, "You know what?

I think that I could use the help."

And I started learning about the travel agent industry.

I would like to challenge everyone to do this.

Go Google travel agents.

Click on whatever you find and just look what you see.

They literally all say the same thing.

They literally say "provide you service,"

"add value," "blah."

It's just like, this is all bullshit.

They all look the same.

That's how you look to clients.

If you're a wedding photographer,

I also hired a wedding photographer for our wedding.

They all look the same.

So we found someone totally different.

So let me give you a couple of examples.

Once you do your research on all the travel agents,

you're just gonna be like, these are all the same.

They're commodities. They're like salt.

I could buy this, I could buy that. It's a commodity.

I found two that I thought were phenomenal.

Now for us, for the clientele,

we wanted to take a luxury trip,

it was very complex, and we wanted everything to be handled.

So that's the clientele we're talking about

in this scenario.

Go look at a couple of brands.

One is Scott Dunn, who we ended up using.

Mikado is also a really good luxury travel agent.

Go look at what they say in their positioning and branding.

And they charge way more than the typical travel agent.

Why?

Go study that and see what they do.

For everyone who is stuck on finding more clients,

realize this.

If you're currently charging 400 bucks, or 4,000,

whatever you're charging, getting more clients

is just gonna put you in the same position

unless you radically increase it,

unless you find a way to two X, three X, five X.

So think about what you need to change.

If you're only offering wedding photos,

maybe you can do same day photos,

because your wedding couple wants to post it on Instagram.

Maybe you can do different types of edits.

There's a million different things you can do.

What your clients probably don't care about

is you talking about all your technical

camera F-stop equipment.

They don't give a shit about that.

You gotta really interview your clients and say,

"What is it that you value

and who else are you talking to?"

Study those people, change your service offerings,

and then constantly test it.

That's how you get out of quicksand.

- You could really see where these money stories

that we tell ourselves

and our parents tell ourselves as kids

could even influence your business,

and I think sometimes we get advice from the wrong people.

- Oh, from a bunch of broke entrepreneurs.

You and your broke entrepreneur photographers

all in the same subreddit.

Oh, there's no way.

Life is so difficult. Boo-hoo.

It's like you're getting advice

from other people who are not succeeding.

Why are you listening to them?

- And you're even thinking about yourself.

You're like, "Well, I would never spend $2,000

for a wedding film or a wedding video."

- But you're not the client. Exactly.

I'm so glad you say this.

If you yourself don't value what you're offering,

your clients can sniff that out from a million miles away.

So I talked to a bunch of photographers. It was amazing.

When I got on wedding photography calls

with my, at the time, fiance, dude, it was insane.

We get on the call,

and it was like they all must have read the same book.

And I was like, whatever book this is, it sucks.

(Matt laughs) 'Cause they start,

they go, "What's your love story?"

- Oh, goodness.

- Like what the fuck?

First of all, what's a love story?

And second of all-

- Why do you care? - Why do I wanna

tell this love story to some rando

I'm never gonna talk to again?

So we had a 30-minute call, right?

And I'm punctual, and we're 16 minutes into the call

talking about how we met.

And I'm just like, "This is just bad strategy."

I didn't say this, but I'm like,

"You really wanna be using 16 out of 30 minutes

on our love story?"

And I later realized they're trying to build rapport,

and usually they're dealing with, in my case, my fiance,

but I was leading the call.

The calls were not going well.

Finally we talked to one photographer who we loved

and she was just like, she asked us questions,

she could read the room, and she realized,

okay, get to the point, talk about what we want.

We had a multicultural wedding,

so like, "Oh, I've done that.

I've shot an Indian and Jewish wedding, da da da da,"

Now we're talking. We're looking at her photos.

But what did not come up?

I never asked her about her equipment.

I don't give a shit. I just look at her photos.

I'm like, "How fast can you get 'em?

How do you guarantee that you don't lose the film?

And I want this, this, and this." Done.

Price was irrelevant.

When you nail the right client, the positioning,

I always say price is a mere triviality.

So if you're busy worrying about things...

And you kind of know when it's not working.

It's like you're trying to convince these clients,

and they're just like, eh, they're not interested,

or you feel like you're really having to put the sell,

you know something is wrong.

When it clicks, like it just fits,

that's when you know you've nailed the right client,

and the right position, and the right offer.

- Let's do a few questions here from Twitter,

and then we'll wrap up.

Christian Crisolo.

How can I become financially free

while being an average day job earner?

- That's how most people do it.

So don't handicap yourself by saying,

"Oh, I'm just an average day job earner."

The vast majority who have become wealthy

did it through something that you have access to,

which is the stock market.

So let's flip this.

I actually...

One of the most powerful things I learned

from one of my mentors, Jay Abraham,

was to take a weakness and turn it into a strength.

This guy says, I'm just an average day job-having guy.

I'm like, you are set up, man.

You can take the money that you make

and you can put some of it into a 401k.

If you've got a 401k match, that's free money. Do that.

You've got an IRA. You can set that up.

It's all in here. It's the ladder of investing.

Where does your money go?

You can start, and I know it might seem small,

maybe you don't have thousands of dollars,

but you start off small.

Any raise you get, take part of that, put it in here.

So now you've got that flywheel turning every single month,

you've got money automatically investing.

The stock market we know on average

returns about seven to 8% per year.

That means your money is doubling

every approximately 10 years.

That becomes phenomenal as you're adding to it.

So don't discount yourself.

You're in a really good position.

And of course, if you want to accelerate that,

you can do something on the side

when you come home from work or early in the morning.

So that's a possibility as well.

- Cameron Moore.

Oh, this is good. Okay.

So he says, if you only had $50, Ramit,

lost everything, and had zero influence,

how would you get back to where you are now?

And I wonder how long you think it would take.

- I don't know if my next path

would be exactly the same path as I took.

So first of all, when I was in college,

I remember one of my professors said something to me.

He said, "I'm really jealous of you students,

because every quarter you get to erase your life

and start over completely fresh."

And I didn't really understand what he meant,

but think about all the entanglements you now have.

You know, you have a house, or you live somewhere,

or you need to show up at this or that.

If you could just wipe the slate clean,

you might not end up in exactly the same place.

Now you love what you're doing, I love what I'm doing,

but I think it's an interesting thought exercise

maybe once a year.

If I could wipe the slate clean,

what would I be doing more of and less of?

To answer the question,

I would start off by going to everyone who I knew,

and again, in this fantasy world, they don't know me,

but anyone I know who's doing interesting stuff,

and I would briefcase technique the shit out of them.

I would come to you, I'd say,

"Oh, I love your videos, da, da, da.

Here's some marketing things that I have done in the past

that worked really well.

In fact, I did one for you.

It boosted views by 40%.

Love to see if we can set up time to talk."

Right?

And I would do that with everyone else in L.A.,

and I would take one trip out here

and knock out like 20 meetings.

Boom. I have three clients right there.

I would do the same thing with writing.

I would start writing for people.

I would do it for free. I would also get paid.

Ultimately, I would also start an email list.

This is a huge, huge thing.

It's probably the biggest business mistake I made

was not starting an email list early enough.

Now we have four or 500,000 people on that email list,

and people buy on email.

I would make sure that I started an email list,

and I would make sure that I thought about the topics

that I was writing about.

I write, so that's the kind of way

that I communicate with the world.

When I started out, I was writing a lot of different stuff,

but it was important for me to realize

that if you want a business, not just a hobby,

you need to be also writing about topics

where people want to spend money.

Otherwise it's just a hobby.

I had a product that was an abysmal failure

called the screwed strategy.

I showed people who wanted to save money

all these cool techniques, $8 a month.

Well guess what?

It turns out people who wanna save money

don't wanna spend money in order to save it.

Sort of obvious in retrospect.

I would make sure I avoided those mistakes.

- Right.

I think that's about it.

Anything else that you wanna add here

before we close things up?

- I just wanna say thank you for having me.

And honestly, my favorite part is just hearing

how you used the book to create your rich life.

So thank you very much for having me.

- Yeah, dude, honestly, when you reached out,

we had a mutual friend to connect us,

and I was like "That Ramit?"

I was like, "Oh, sick, man!

That's amazing."

I mean, honestly, your work really did help me out-

- Thank you. - Massively early on,

and your writing has been super inspiring

to so many people I know,

so thanks for the work you do.

- Thank you.

- [Matt] Thanks for watching.

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