You are surrounded by simple, obvious solutions that can dramatically increase your income, power, influence and success. The problem is, you just don’t see them.
– Jay Abraham.
Making money and talking smack are two things that I enjoy. It also seems like the author behind I Will Teach You To Be Rich, Ramit Sethi, does so as well. Ramit loves to mock those that stress about saving money on lattes and give foolish money management tips.
Whenever I try something new I make it a point to observe what others are doing. I try to watch successful people to see what they’re doing differently from everyone else. This is why Ramit caught my attention. With the plethora of personal finance bloggers out there, he’s one of the few that has written a book and been featured on major media.
This is why I wanted to share what I learned about entrepreneurship and growing a business from Ramit Sethi:
Barriers are extremely powerful.
When you create a barrier to entry (mailing list sign up or entry fee) people will perceive this as being of higher value. I signed up for his Scrooge Strategy program a few years ago. The cost of $10/month made this service feel like it was more valuable than your typical blog posts on saving money.
Barriers also work the other way. We often create unnecessary barriers for ourselves. This includes thinking that we’re not “smart enough” to make more money or making excuses for why our friends are successful and we’re not. Learning how to deal with these barriers is highly valuable skill that can take you a long way in life.
People hate being told they can’t have something.
This ties into the previous point. Ramit filters out his clients. Whether it be through bashing frugality tips or not letting those in credit card debt join his premium courses, he knows how to remove the readers that aren’t fit for his blog. As a result some people will either leave resentful comments on the blog or just not return. The positive to this is obvious. You don’t deal with the whiners and you take care of your loyal readers that are willing to support you.
Stop worrying about minor BS.
Ignore the minor stuff and ruthlessly focus on the big wins. IWTYTBR often mocks those that save money on minor things. While I personally do recommend that you go after the small wins, it’s much more important to reduce your credit card APR or to save thousands of dollars by making a wise decision between renting and owning a home.
This also applies to business. During the Earn1K course, Ramit gets us to switch focus from arbitrary tasks (starting a Twitter account, creating business cards) to finding a few paying clients. This gets you started by testing out your idea and making some money from it, instead of worrying about your business logo.
Pay for value.
With the majority of pf blogs out there telling you to save, save, save, it’s refreshing to hear someone offer a different take. This is an excellent business strategy. Actually it’s an excellent strategy for life. Paying for value can lead to disproportionate results. When you pay for value you can leap past your competition. Whether it be paying for business consulting advice or working out with a personal trainer, when you pay for value you don’t waste your time on pointless stuff.
That’s what I’ve learned from Ramit Sethi about making money and growing a business in general. Over the next few weeks I’ll be writing about what I learned about business, money, and life from others. Stay tuned.
I think earning and savings are both key factors, just like offense and defense on a sports team. Many good teams build their offense off of their defense, and we can do the same with our money.
For example, if you take care of your credit score and save up money for a business war chest, then you can use your cash and your ability to borrow money to fund your next income generating idea.
I agree that one of the best ways to improve financially and business-wise is to learn from the successes of others (this applies to life more generally, as well). There’s no need to reinvent the wheel.
I think it totally behooves us to study folks such as Ramit Sethi, as well as Starbucks, Apple, Bill Gates, etc. With each there are principals for success that we can distill and apply for ourselves.