RBT Brunch with Ramit Sethi

Prepared by: Naveen Dittakavi, iMLogical, Inc.

December 25, 2012

iMLogical, Inc. 320 Canopy Cove | Alpharetta, GA 30022 T 678-462-5406 F (404) 806-4455 naveen@imlogical.com
Pages 1-16 Copyright 2012 Naveen Dittakavi | All Rights Reserved | Copyright and all rights to Individual writeups are reserved for each author
Permission to include all writeups herein has been explicitly obtained by Naveen Dittakavi
Online to offline reality

Thud...Thud...Thud...

“In 300 ft, turn left onto Beverly Blvd.”

“Now turn left.”

Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud.

“In 100 feet, your destination is on the right.”

Thudthudthudthudthudthudthudthudthud.

Over 30 hours went into preparing for this morning. It was the first time since my first date with my girlfriend in December
2011 that I had been nervous about anything. The five hours in the air flew by as I was finishing the last two hours of
Ramit speaking about Dream Job in day three of his CreativeLive course. I never bothered with Dream Job because I
never thought it was relevant to a self employed software business owner. The week before the meeting I tried to answer
“Tell me about yourself” - A question that I had not answered in nearly a decade. I was stumped and stuck with my
rambling answer so I turned to where I normally go when I need guidance, The Sethi Archives.

The Sethi Archives is a vast labyrinth of legal pads full of horrendous handwriting that can easily be confused for a richter
scale or EKG print out. However, time and time again these archives of internalized thoughts continue to save me. Trust
the system. A system that Ramit’s team built and a system that I have almost fully internalized.

“Good morning sir. Are you here to check in or are you here for a meeting?”

I reply with a nervous one-word answer, “Meeting.”

I freeze. Do I have everything? Pen? Backup pen? Wallet? Phone? Phone! I used Siri and my cousin’s Garmin to guide
me to the Sofitel in Beverly Hills. I disconnected my iPhone from the car and stepped out to the valet who had already
retrieved my jacket and was waiting to put it on me. Weird - I haven’t had a jacket put on me before, I’m usually the one
helping my friends out with that. I turned and handed the key to him, and then I remembered... trust the system.

I had a notecard that I made earlier that morning that wrote out my execution plan and in it was that I needed to
disconnect my iPhone, check, put on my jacket, check, and retrieve The Disney Technique from the back seat.... now,
check.

RBT Brunch with Ramit Sethi 1

It’s 10:30. I’m 30 minutes early, whew. I wanted to be an hour early but I went five over the speed limit, annoyed the hell
of out people on the 405 but I did not want to take any chance and risk being pulled over and late to this meeting.

My next directive according to the card was... Ask Hotel rep for directions. Check.

Thud thud thud thud thud.

I walk through a beautiful glass walled restaurant and filled with natural lighting and towards the back room, also a glass
room and saw Alec. Alec! Alec has been my Earn1K accountability partner - my new “boss”. Our conversations every
two weeks keep us both moving forward. Alec filled me in when folks are likely to show up and that Ramit and his friend
are about 10-15 minutes away. He also said that seating had been assigned and that later on we’re going to do a book
signing and a photo shoot courtesy of Aaron.

“Where am I sitting?”, I thought.

“You lucked out, you’re right next to Ramit.” Alec said.

THUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUD

Breathe. Breathe.

Okay, I’m calm again. “What’s next, my blue notecard?”

“Lay out notecards.” it read.

I reached into my inner jacket pocket and grabbed my color-coded notecards. I had written the layout sequence
according to a strategy so that certain cards were closer to me than others - they were available to me based on
expected conversation flow.

“DONE. Mingle. Smile. Trust the system.” the notecard read.

Slowly, a few other RBT-ers filed in, I recognized nearly all of them. I smiled when Julia introduced herself to me. She had
posted a flyer for analysis on the persuasion, value proposition and ethical sales email group about her caricature service.
I had asked her for her Ramit-context, “First, are you Earn1K?”. I later got a private message from a helpful friend saying,
“uh dude, she’s THE case study of Earn1K.”

A few minutes later, all went quiet. I thought it was just me blanking out but it was Ramit and Britney Castro who had just
walked in. In just a few seconds the energy level moved up one notch. Ramit and Britney were great in immediately
cutting the tension with their big smiles and their easy going presence. This was not the same Ramit you have seen in his
marketing videos. Over the course of the morning we learn that the “high-low-high Ramit” is what’s required to produce
engaging videos whereas the in-person Ramit is an even-tempered, excellent listener - not what I expected. As Ramit is
known to say, I had been saying “Very interesting.” in my head throughout the course of the morning.

One of the most fascinating discussions was about to begin.

RBT Brunch with Ramit Sethi 2

 “THIS fucking guy?”

As we all got seated, Ramit started us off with some solid icebreakers. There’s no question that these icebreakers have
been tested so definitely consider using them.

“Who came the farthest today?” While Kevin had just driven in from San Diego, the hats off went to Sharlotte who made
it in the day before from Edmonton, Alberta Province, Canada. Her flight was delayed because “you know it was 12
degree F” and her plane needed to be de-iced. She won.

We talked about how it’s a trip to meet your online buddies in person. It’s funny that sometimes people are exactly what
you’d expect and how sometimes they’re uh... dramatically different. Even Ramit has been a subject of this surprise as
he has received quite a few backwards compliments. People would walk into meetings with Ramit and say to him, “Wow,
you look better in real life!”

Thao mentioned that as part of her preparation she looked up Ramit’s college website and saw his pictures from way
back then. Ramit loves that the internet saves all those pictures.

With timing that one would think was entirely scripted, Russell brings out a photo of Ramit, the same terrible headshot
that Ramit gets backwards compliments on, that he captioned “Don’t be part of the unwashed masses.” We shared a
good laugh as we imagined Russell saying “Good night, Ramit” to the photo.

Ramit told us a few stories about at his IWT meet ups in New York, that girls will bring their boyfriends to introduce them
to him and sometimes the guy will say “THIS fucking guy?”. I explained that my sister had called me out as I was
debating with her which suit I wanted to wear to the meeting.

Ramit explained that he was most surprised at how RBT is meeting up and reaching out to one another. He said that
he’s prioritized his developers to include an ability for us to quickly reach out to other RBT-ers city by city to schedule
meet ups. For now, your best resource is the Meet Up Groups document in RBT where you can reach out and contact
the folks in your city or region to get together. Ramit recommends that you go ahead and pick a date, time, and place
and ask folks to join.

“You REALLY need to do this... SERIOUSLY!!!”

Ramit says, our friends are our friends. Go out and get drinks with them, hang out with them, they're not losers. He said
that a friend of his finally reached out recently to ask him about some fitness questions. Ramit said that he has been
waiting his whole life for his friends to ask for any sort of help.

I explained that I got frustrated at one of my closest friends recently: He had reached out to me for help and I asked him
to join RBT. I said to him “Why aren’t you doing this?” His response included all kinds of invisible scripts and the shrug
effect. He said things like “Naveen, you have this, that, and the other” And in frustration, I said “LISTEN MAN, I got here
from years of practice. This was not some overnight process but it’s not possible to move forward unless you take a step
forward yourself.”

RBT Brunch with Ramit Sethi 3

Ramit was surprised that I was able to convince my friend to join. He said that it’s incredibly difficult to get his students to
have their friends join any of his programs. He said that he never asks us to refer our friends because he knows the result
is horrible. He talked about how his affiliate program failed... and when he tried that program out, he was blown away
with what the numbers would have been with a 1% conversion rate - however he learned through the test that around
four people joined via a friend affiliate program and therefore does not ask us to directly refer our friends to his programs
anymore.

He said that you may notice that when people ask you “Wow! How did you lose that weight or how did you do xyz?” and
you say, “I used Earn1K or something” they say, “Well that’s cool but I don’t think it’ll work for me and here’s why.”

The reason he asked us what our friends say, is because he believes that it reinforces our decision and we can see for
ourselves how difficult it is for people to change.

I explained some of my frustration when I would show friends No Stress Negotiations and I said “Look at this! Look at the
quality of this material, and do you not understand the compound effect?”

Ramit used to be very frustrated with his friends. He used to say “you really need to do this, SERIOUSLY!”

He said that when he was younger he was pretty good at reading people, he knew when he was screwing up. He’d
recognize and say to to himself “Oh shit, this is not resonating at all.” He said that we’re all socially awkward to some
degree but many people can’t tell that they are socially awkward. He gave us an example of how he observed a really
long winded guy speak and saw peoples’ faces glaze over. He recognized that when he would tell his friends
“SERIOUSLY!!” that their eyes glazed over in the same way. His recommendation is “instead of speaking at them, speak
with them.”

Ramit goes on to explain that your friends are just that: your friends. They aren't losers for not subscribing to self
development. He recommends that you not push them to subscribe to self development. Instead, you can let them know
what you do or would do if they ask questions but consider using “when you're ready” in your response.

We touched on how to hire friends: One of Ramit’s friends is very good at strategy review. Ramit wanted to pay his friend,
but his friend resisted. Ramit said that it’s weird to pay your friends but its required in order for them to take it seriously -
and you can only tell someone you hire what you want them to do.

“I was more frustrated with myself than with her”

Ramit explains that he bought a couple of jackets from an online store. He realized after the return period that they did
not fit so he tried his luck at the online store’s physical location in New York. He asked the clerk if they would be willing to
accept his return but they declined since he was outside of their return period. He accepted that it was his mistake and
that he would like to wear the jackets but they were too big for him and asked if the store would tailor them for him. The
clerk said that they could tailor it for him for a a $65 fee. Ramit explained that he was angry that this store, where he has

RBT Brunch with Ramit Sethi 4

spent thousands of dollars to date and where he is a private client, would not tailor it for him and eat the cost in order to
benefit from his customer lifetime value. He left the store disappointed, upset and said that he would rather give the
jackets away than pay the store for tailoring. His frustration continued until he took a moment to realize where it was
coming from:

Ramit explained that when he feels a negative emotion like frustration he likes to take a moment to understand the
source of the frustration. He realized that he left the store before articulating to the clerk that since he had been a loyal
private client with a strong purchase history and that if they wanted his continued business, a fair offer would be to tailor
the jackets for free. He realized that he did not close the loop and that he was more frustrated with himself than with the
clerk. He explained that when we have these moments when we get upset, angry, or frustrated at our boss or at others,
we should take a moment to determine why we’re frustrated so that we can grow from the experience.

“Yeah the world may be unfair but what did we do wrong?”

Ramit explained that testing is in the blood of IWT and everything is rigorously tested. He explained that they recently had
a bad test and his team was coming up with conclusions that didn’t seem right. With his tests, especially the ones that
fail horribly, he says “maybe those conclusions are right but what else did we do wrong here?” Perhaps the answers that
blame external factors are true but he said that you don’t grow by blaming others - you only grow if you use introspection
and take the time to determine if you may have done something wrong as well.

“This is going to be awesome - who’s in?”

Ramit spoke about how thrilled he was to see the spontaneous meet ups that we are organizing on our own. What he
also noticed is how we are doing some of the things he did in the past with respect to organizing events. In the past even
he was guilty of inviting friends to get together by using a phrase like “Hey guys, I was thinking of getting together in
LA...” He said a better way is to phrase it as “Hey - I’m doing a meet up on Jan 20 in LA, I’d love it if you guys come.” He
said when you change the message to “This is going to be awesome, who’s in?” or to “I’m doing this, I’m going to have
a good time one way or another, who wants to come?” your response rate to invitations will improve. He said that
instead of waiting you can be proactive and that being proactive is so much better than being reactive. He said he
learned this method from his mentor, BJ Fogg, who explained to him that “we’re looking for leaders.”

“I may have been awkward but at least I could tell that I was being awkward”

Ramit said that IWT is looking at doing more live events soon and asked us what we would be interested in seeing live.
He said that their Social Skills material is most effective live since he can show people how to tweak themselves in real
time and the changes can be seen immediately. He spoke about how Asian and Indian guys aren’t taught culturally how
to tell emotive and engaging stories - he explained that at Dream Job Elite he was able to help someone who had an
amazing story change his robotic, fast, and monotonous delivery to deliver the same story after slowing it down and
tweaking a few things to make his story incredibly engaging.

He said that one thing he realized when he was younger was that while he may have been awkward, at least he could
recognize when he was being awkward. He said that if you can notice that people aren’t resonating with what you are

RBT Brunch with Ramit Sethi 5

saying or doing, you can tweak what you are doing wrong and he encourages you to ask your friends to give you
critiques.

“We can all do better at recognizing when things work and when things don't work.”

Ramit asked us “What do you think is your biggest area to work on within social skills?”

One person replied that they had trouble telling stories and that they were guilty of moving too quickly and that they
recognized that the other person’s attention was being lost.

Ramit said he recently spoke with a recent college graduate and explained that one of the most difficult challenges he
has when others speak to him is how fast they speak. Ramit said that the person on the other end of the phone was
speaking so fast that it was mentally difficult to follow and that Ramit became exhausted with the conversation.

His feedback was to slow down. He said that when you slow down, your status will go way up.

“Humans are incapable of not stopping and listening to a story.”

I followed up with a question about Ramit’s story toolbox. I asked Ramit what he would recommend to someone who is
just getting started about how they should construct their own story toolbox:

Ramit said that the first thing is to write down 10 stories that are either funny, sad, emotional, or impactful. He said that
during the testing for Dream Job, his initial students were crying during interview testing and he thought that some of
IWT’s developed techniques would have to be sent back to the drawing board. After they researched why the techniques
were failing they realized that they did not have the students build in any emotion into their stories. He recommends
taking from your story toolbox and trying those stories when you’re out in social situations.

You want to have stories ready based on context. The stories you would tell in a bar versus those you would tell in a
professional environment are going to be different. However it’s important to note that humans are incapable of not
stopping and listening to an engaging story.

I asked him about how he got better at storytelling, he said that he had been studying narrative for the last couple of
years and that some great resources are a book called “Story” and the stories in “Reader’s Digest.”

“People know and say I should stop this.”

Our conversation on social dynamics and delivery continued: Sharlotte said that she observed that women tend to agree
too much, that they tend to be too eager, and show their eagerness by nodding a bit too much.

Ramit said that while he writes about gender dynamics in his course, he does not do so publicly because it’s not
politically correct for him as a guy to be telling women what they should be doing in these situations. He said that during
their research they noticed that during some interviews women smile too much or have an upturn in their voice at the end
of their statements. They also observed that while women might ask a lot of questions during an interview, they might not
incorporate internalized context in their response. Ramit said that they noticed that a very skilled man would have a few

RBT Brunch with Ramit Sethi 6

questions but then would also respond with “That’s interesting because XYZ” and would know how to tie his skills and
experience in within his response. He said that in Dream Job 2.0, launching in January, they are demonstrating more
scenarios where you can see more women interviewing against Ramit, watch how he tweaks the delivery of their
responses, and observe the dramatic change in their responses.

Julia mentioned that she observed that women sometimes say their name as if they are asking a question. “What’s your
name?” “Julia?”

Ramit said that the interesting thing is that most people know that they do this but the problem is that these traits are so
socially ingrained. People know and say “I should stop this.” but it actually takes time to practice these tweaks and with
that practice you can change the dynamic for the scenarios that matter the most - interview and negotiation situations.

Ramit said that he got better at communicating effectively because he watched people on the Today show and listened
to interviews on NPR. He said that those guests have whittled their response down to their key message and have
practiced and mastered their delivery.

Ramit said that there's a recent interview with Tim Cook of Apple where Tim answers the interviewer’s question but with
Tim’s and Apple’s message. Ramit went on to explain that if someone asks him a question that he has an answer to, he
wants to answer the question but with his key message. If he receives a question like “Hey Ramit what do you think
about software...?” Ramit would respond with “Well, when we first started...” Ramit said that all the master CEOs do this.

“A relentless focus on testing”

A question was raised, “so what do you think is your secret sauce?” Ramit responded that he thinks its three things: his
background in psychology, testing, and really being able to understand problems.

Ramit said that he and his staff have a relentless focus on testing. He explained that very few companies really do
extensive testing. He also said that the research that he and his team undertake to really understand his audience’s
problems yield the phrases that he uses in his copy. He went on to explain that his material must also deliver results. He
said while the copy may work to make a customer purchase a course, if his material doesn’t deliver, chances are that the
student is gone forever. However, when his readers see results even from the free material, they are a student for life.

We asked him to elaborate more on his testing and how he runs tests on himself. He said that he recently found a way to
get his nap down to 15 minutes after being at 20 minutes for several months. He tried tests like drinking tea beforehand
or going to the gym at different times. He said that he likes to test things in social situations such as seeing which stories
really hit and which bomb.

He said that he was observing people at a bar the prior night and noticed that if they changed a couple of things in their
social dynamic, their lives would completely change.

RBT Brunch with Ramit Sethi 7

I explained that I realized the benefit of testing my own message when people ask me what I do. When I respond with, “I
run a software development company”, I receive a completely different reaction than what I had said before. Ramit
agreed and said, “Every word you said earned its way into that phrase. I run.”

We talked about testing and product development. Ramit explained that when they were researching Dream Job, they
wanted to validate the idea. So after months of research, they had built out a prototype in Google Docs and reached out
to friends to run them through the initial prototypes. Dream Job did not yield success until the 17th iteration. Shortly after
they knew that the product was rock solid and only then they did turn to building out the marketing. Ramit said that
people sometimes get so caught up in their idea before testing it. He always asks them “How many people have you
talked to?” and recommends to them to go and talk to their audience.

Naveen’s notes: It’s very interesting to hear that Ramit waits to ensure that his product is rock solid before he moves his
effort from product development to marketing. This was in contradiction to previous advice I had heard in the Lean
Startup sphere.

A member asked Ramit, “What did you do to systematically improve yourself?”

Ramit explained that he modeled behaviors. He said when you observe some people, it’s easy to say, “Oh, well of course
they’re good at that, they’re naturals.” They might be naturals but you can still model them. Ramit said that he has
trouble speaking with doormen because he doesn’t follow sports but he watches how people chat with doormen, chat in
bars, etc. and models successful dialogue and positive social dynamic.

Naveen’s Strategy Q&A with Ramit Sethi

What were the most important systems and strategies that you put in place to get from one product to multiple
products? Specifically, how were/are you able to have so many irons in the fire?

Ramit was frank in his response that having a successful product helps as revenues can be used to invest. However he
notes that it’s always been messy for him. It’s also helpful for him to have a highly engaged audience. He is able to say
“We’re going to do this product in this area and we’ll figure it out.” He has a team of people that help him in research,
product development, tech, and launch. However, he said the key is to make the product rock solid and successful
before it ever launches so that you can “crush it”.

I brought into perspective my current frustration of wanting to move on from consulting to productization. He asked me
to consider the short term and long term and asked me to think about where I want to be a year or two from now. He
said to me, “Chances are, you don’t want to be doing $25k projects. Your recurring revenue base allows you to take on
one-off or massive opportunities. It will take longer than you think.” He explained that it was very difficult for him to make
Earn1K evergreen but that they continued to work to crack the code over a period of years. He recommended that I
start to scale my project load down from five projects a month to four to three and start to move my time to recurring
revenue activities. He recommended that I speak to Patrick McKenzie as well.

RBT Brunch with Ramit Sethi 8

My next question to him was a question raised at our Atlanta RBT lunch discussion: “How do you hack work life
balance? How would you handle a family of your own?” I added, “You said that you like to go out at night with your
friends regularly but yet you are so productive? What do you do that allows you to be so productive?”

Ramit said that he’s very particular about answering questions like this. Since does not have his own family, he doesn’t
want to answer this question. He went on to say that sometimes with advisors there is a halo effect and you have to
know who you should take advice from. He explained that he won’t ask some guy on the street about conversions, so he
tries not to answer questions that he can’t speak to personally.

Ramit explained that he is able to be so productive because he is able to work on high leverage material. He provided his
example: He writes the blog material but someone else puts it into Wordpress. He writes his email copy because no one
else can write like him but again, he does not put it into his ESP. While writing copy that will be read by thousands of his
readers is a high leverage activity, preparing the copy for fulfillment is not. He went on to explain that one thing that
nobody asks themselves is “What are high leverage activities that I could be doing and how do I get to a place where I
am working almost exclusively on that?” He mentioned Eben Pagan’s concept of taking time to reflect on how you can
free up an hour each week by outsourcing a low leverage activity. Ramit summed it up with “big wins fix the latte
problem. The details work themselves out.”

Examples: Can you pay someone to go grocery shopping for you? Can you pay someone to handle your laundry? Or
your cooking?

“I don't even care about price because the fit is so right.”

Julia asked Ramit “where did you find your CPA?” Ramit said that he wanted a CPA that was good with information
products and that Tim Ferris recommended his CPA. Ramit was looking for someone proactive, someone who would tell
him what to do.

He said that he knew that the CPA firm came vetted because his friend had referred them to him. It was also interesting
to hear that the CPA positioned themselves as information product accountants. He said that they were ready to take
care of him from every stage. They used phrases that were competence triggers such as “According to what we've
seen...” Ramit said when the fit is right, he doesn’t even care about price.

“What are some things that you do to ensure a good dinner party experience?”

Julia asked Ramit how he throws interesting dinner parties. She wanted to know the things that he does to ensure a
good dinner party experience.

Ramit said that you should invite really interesting people. He has a tested script template for the invitation that works
really well. In the invitation he doesn’t tell them who else going to be there and the invitee usually comes. They use a
restaurant that they are very familiar with so that the restaurant’s staff knows exactly what to do and when. Ramit co-
hosts the dinner with Michael Fishman and they take care of the check and the guests find that gesture unexpected and

RBT Brunch with Ramit Sethi 9

are appreciative. In the invitation they ask the guest to be prepared to do a five minute introduction and give each guest
permission to brag. If they don’t brag, Ramit and Michael do it for them and say something really nice about the guest.

Ramit and Michael close the dinner conversation by asking the guests, “Is there anything we can do to help? Is there
anyone at the table that wants help?” They tell the guests that they’ll send out contact information on their behalf and
Ramit and Michael each give each guest one book. Michael gives the book “Breakthrough Advertising” and Ramit gives
out “Age of Propaganda” and they explain why they give the guests those books.

Ramit explained that when you do something with good intentions for another, tell that person why you’re doing it. For
example, Ramit said that he doesn’t allow students who have credit card debt to sign up for his premium courses and he
explains to them why. Ramit ends the dinner by explaining to the guests that it’s rare that six to seven people who don’t
know each other get together in New York where everyone is trusted and aren’t there for a reason. He said that the last
time cool people were able to meet up with no agenda was in college.

“The Disney Technique”

As a thank you for coming, we all wrote testimonials that Alec collated and gave it to Ramit in person and via email.

However, before Alec could transition us to the book signing

and photo shoot, I interrupted the transition for a moment to
relay a new technique that I had developed. Here’s the script I
drafted for that day:

“Hey Ramit - so I have a technique I wanted to run by you. It's

called the Disney Technique. Real quick, I wanted to show you
how it works. First, you grab a hidden blue bag from under your
chair. Then I ask you to grab the Disney technique out of the
bag... and yep, go ahead an open it... Ramit meet “Trusty”.
“Trusty” is appropriately named dog from Lady and the Tramp. And actually, “Trusty” comes with his own collar and tag.

RBT Brunch with Ramit Sethi 10

The tag reads “Trusty - Sell. The. Animal.” (Reverse: “RBT Brunch LA / Dec 8, 2012 / From Naveen Dittakavi” For those
of you who don’t know, this is Ramit's philosophy on pets.

Thank You

Ramit -

Thank you for hosting brunch in Los Angeles. It

was a pleasure to finally meet you and hear your
insights that will help us all go to the next level.

I told my fellow members after our post-mortem

that I wanted to closely capture this
conversation and my takeaways because I
know that one year from now, I’ll be able to
revisit this document and internalize these
details completely differently.

Merry Christmas,

Naveen

“Coming Soon”

Ramit and team are currently preparing for the 2.0 launch of Dream Job. They are re-launching with a lot of new material
and with a focus of showing more before-and-afters so you can see how tweaks can yield dramatic changes. He's
discovered more barriers and will show us how to knock them down.

He asks RBT: “What ideas do you have for a live event?” “What courses would you like Ramit to develop?”

Ramit is considering providing a course on productivity for Jan 2014.

Other notes: Michael Fishman and Ramit are doing a conference on behavior next year.

“I used to live in a fucking dump and now I’m living it up”

Tony Nguyen asked what we could do for Ramit - Ramit said one of his biggest challenges is to get frank video
testimonials from his students. Ramit explained that video testimonials are very impactful, especially when he speaks to
audiences that don’t read his material. For example when he guest posts on Lifehacker, those readers don’t believe his
written testimonials. However they can’t argue when they see 10, 20, 30 regular people giving testimonials like “I used to
live in a fucking dump and now I’m living it up”. If you want to give Ramit a present for the holidays, a short, honest,
webcam video testimonial is the best gift you can send his way.

Here’s what Alec Barron recommends:

RBT Brunch with Ramit Sethi 11

Thanks for agreeing to record a short video testimonial for Ramit. He's going to love it.

You all are probably smart enough to figure this out yourselves, but what the hell, I'll hold your hand through the process
of making the video testimonial.

Before I do that, I want to highlight one important point: your testimonial should be about 60 seconds. People aren't
going to watch you yap for 5 minutes about how wonderful Ramit is so keep it quick and snappy. It's actually better to
err on the side of too short.

Prepare notes for what you want to say. Just keep it to bullet points. Your testimonial should answer the following:

• Who are you?

• What problem did you have?

• Why was this a difficult problem to deal with?

• How did a Ramit product help you solve the problem?

• How has your life/business changed since? (more specific the better!)

1. Go here: https://www.youtube.com/my_webcam

2. Record yourself. If you don't like the recording, do it again.

3. When you have one you like, click 'Upload'

4. Change the title to something like "Testimonial for Ramit Sethi's Dream Job Course" or "How I landed my Dream
Job thanks to Ramit Sethi!"

5. Add a 2-3 sentence description

6. Optional: Add some tags like Ramit Sethi, Earn1k, Dream Job, etc.

7. Click 'Save Changes'

8. If all went well, you'll see a message that says something like, "Thank you! Your upload is complete. Blah blah blah."

9. Click on 'View on video page'

10. Copy the URL and send to mralecbarron@gmail.com

11. Done!

Additional tips to make it awesome:

RBT Brunch with Ramit Sethi 12

• Don't sound too rehearsed. You should sound like a real person, not an actor Ramit paid to say nice things about him.

• Think about how to tell your story in the most compelling way. You don't have to exactly use the framework I
suggested. Use your best judgment.

• Use specific numbers if possible.

• Don't look like a slob, but there's no need to look fancy.

Sample testimonials:

• From Costa Rica: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXrVaR4a77o

• Decent but too long: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCmHH9oDCGo

• College friend of Ramit's: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAZ6MmKLChY

RBT Brunch with Ramit Sethi 13

Post-Mortem Analysis

Whenever I get an opportunity to have a conversation like what we had that Saturday in December, I like to take a
moment to talk about the key takeaways that I and the other participants had while the conversation is fresh. Here are
the highlights from the post-mortem analysis conducted after Ramit and Britney left:

Friends

Your friends are your friends, they aren't losers for not subscribing to self development. Don't push them to subscribe to
self development, you can let them know what you do if they ask questions but consider using "when you're ready" in
your response.

Thao: “On a personal note, when I go out and dance, my ability to focus is impacted by going out.”

Naveen: “I love go out to dance too, but it requires me to drink a lot of alcohol and I can't bounce back now that I'm 30.
It's pretty rare that I go party that hard anymore because I recognize that I can't bounce back and I don’t want to lose
the next day.”

Question: What course that is not a productivity course do you want Ramit to create?

Two ideas:

• Habits - Building better habits and more tactical examples from Duhigg.
• Going deeper with natural networking - Ramit said that had “Never Eat Alone” not been written, Ramit would have
written that book. What would he have done differently?

Idea for RBT emails:

Could Ramit announce the guest a little earlier? Someone heard that Charles Duhigg was going to be month 2‘s guest
and bought and read Duhigg’s book the week before the interview was released. If Ramit can announce who the person
is going to be in the interview a little earlier, we can maximize our return by doing some homework ahead of time.

Besides video testimonials, how else can we help Ramit?

RBT Brunch with Ramit Sethi 14

Kevin said, “The best way is to follow his advice, start dominating it in your field, and sharing on RBT that you're doing
stuff using what he showed & taught you.”

Naveen said, “I’ve heard that successful people want to mentor but few approach them and even fewer take action. If we
can show Ramit by posting on the group or if you want to keep your message private, by sending him direct message,
you can demonstrate to him and to others that it’s worth his time to keep working with us to move us forward.”

On the quality of certain posts on RBT:

It's so hard to answer someone’s question when they don't express themselves clearly. Some people don't even break
up paragraphs, etc.

We agreed that Ramit spoke about this at the brunch. He said that some people don't see that there's a better way to
do it - so it's up to us to show them through Ramit's past posts how to improve their questions so that they can get
better responses.

We talked about using Joanna Wiebe’s testimonial framework from Copyhackers book 5 to prepare our video
testimonials.

We recommended that everyone close the loop with Ramit if they had asked any specific questions or had taken tactical
advice from him.

We talked about two invisible scripts offered by Julia and Russell:

Julia talked about a script holding her back from closing the loop with important people. We helped her tackle it by
saying, “well, if you feel comfortable closing the loop with Ramit, why couldn't you close the loop with anyone else in the
world?”

Russell had some outstanding questions and we talked with him about: How do I do natural networking inside my
company? How do I START the bumblebee tactic?

We went around the room and discussed our one key takeaway from the brunch:

Naveen took away concepts to use his time better and to think about how to leverage it so that he can move on from
consulting to productization.

Russell took away steps on how to get started with natural networking in his company.

Alec is going to think about ways to optimize his life so that he is doing only high value things and will look to see how he
can stop dabbling in many activities so that the result of a few activities are high quality. He is also going to see how he
can use the 80-20 rule to optimize his life.

RBT Brunch with Ramit Sethi 15

Sharlotte is going to reach out more to people in RBT after feeling the results of the last two days of interacting with other
RBT-ers. She is going to prioritize Investing in the right people and determine the other activities that are going to pull her
to where she’s going.

Kevin said that he’s doing a lot of consulting and some of it is not at the quality level that he’d like to be at. He wants to
move to a point where can commit revenue to pushing his time to high value activities.

Ben is going to start accepting his friends as friends and is not going to expect them to be like the folks he’s met through
RBT. He recognized that it's okay to have different groups of friends.

Julia conquered an invisible script holding her back from closing the loop.

Aaron is going to prioritize asking for help when he needs it. He said that he noticed that Ramit said his work is messy
too and that it's not about being perfectly organized or perfect. He feel that this revelation will help from perfectionism
holding him back.

Thao said that she recognized the value of hanging out with the right people.

Closing:

We're convinced that everyone at this table is going to be doing amazing things 10 years from now and we can form a
mafia! :-)

Other notes:

• Russell can give tours of SpaceX for RBT-ers.

Book recommendations:

• Never Eat Alone

• Emergency

RBT Brunch with Ramit Sethi 16

Thao Tu

Ramit's LA Brunch takeaways:

1. Value of people over tasks

Walking in, there was only one thing I wanted to bring up with Ramit. It was about
his experience in college, when he was involved in multiple side projects, school,
and always hanging out with his friends. A major theme in my life is the feeling that
I need to do xillion tasks to be successful, and none of them included people. The
people in my life were of no real value to me because they weren't go-getters and
weren't going anywhere I wanted to go. Without me even mentioning this, Ramit
went straight to how he hangs out with people even if they are different and don't
want to go the path that he wants to. I think he said they are more important, or
just as important. Wow, someone who has accomplished so much is telling me
that people are more important than tasks. I heard the message loud and clear.

2. Visibility and connections

Up to this point, I've only been to meetups of just three to five people. At the three people meetup I was an open book.
At the five I didn't share anything about myself. The brunch was thirteen. A few people asked the group about their
specific journeys and we all brainstormed together. This profoundly impacted me. All they did was ask. Could it be that
simple? All I needed to do is share and ask? I'm not comfortable with attention on me, but I am more tired of letting
amazing things pass me by. There was one more big meetup the following day, and I knew I had to speak up or I would
let fear win another one.

The other part of this is my interaction in this fb page. I realized that I have more fears in expressing myself in writing. That
is why I take so long to respond sometimes. I'm applying both takeaways , and at my own pace, am pushing myself to
just press Enter.

I'm proud to say that I did speak up at the meetup the next day and was warmly received. I also asked for help on two
projects and I am being mentored on both. RBT, you are pushing my limits buddy... thank you.

RBT Brunch with Ramit Sethi 17

Julia Kelly

Meh, finals schminals.

So, my biggest takeaway from brunch with Ramit was that my "excuse
me for living" mentality is unattractive and not doing me any favors. I
realized that an invisible script that I have is "my story is not interesting,
no one wants to hear about me. I shouldn't talk about myself."

At the brunch I was surrounded by a lot of successful people who are

freelancing full time and my automatic assumption was that "no one will
find me interesting so I should just listen and not talk about myself."
However, after brunch Alex and Kevin were mentioning to me that
Ramit had been highlighting my case study in his recent webinars and
pointing to me as a success - yet I still have a nearly impossible time
seeing myself as successful or interesting.

Ramit talked a lot about social skills and having that storytelling tool-kit
prepared for social interactions. I know I need to work on finessing my
storytelling but before I even get to that, I need to actually get
comfortable with the idea of talking about myself. So, that was
takeaway numero uno. Feel free to lay some wisdom on me if you have
solved this problem in your own life.

Second takeaway: You do not need permission to lead. Alexander Barron was able to work with Ramit's team behind the
scenes to put together this event (did the job like a boss!) - and that opportunity came about simply because he had
shown himself capable of making things happen by organizing other RBT meetups. Seriously, I don't know why I keep
waiting around for someone to give me permission to do/create/organize/lead - that's never going to happen. Alex, you
totes inspire me dude. For realz.

Okay, if I don't respond to any comments tomorrow it's because I'll be clawing my way out of the dank underbelly of final
exams but I'll be back on Wednesday. I hope that was helpful in some way. Cheers BT!

RBT Brunch with Ramit Sethi 19

Kevin Espiritu

At the Ramit Sethi LA brunch (that was absolutely amazing),

Ramit shared a ton of great insights...but I heard one a little bit
louder than the others. He shared a story about buying clothes
online from a retailer that he has a long relationship with. They
ended up not fitting, so he went into the store to return them.

Because it was past the return date, the lady at the counter
refused the return, which Ramit said he accepted as his own
fault. Then he asked for them to be tailored so he could at
least wear them...and the lady said it would be $65 per jacket.
Ramit shared that this made him extremely frustrated and
angry, and that the lady "should know" that she should tailor
the jackets for free, especially considering his past with the
company and the massive lifetime value that Ramit holds for
them.

However, he also shared that as he was walking out the door,

he was angry not only at the lady but at himself for not going
that extra step to close the loop in negotiation - he didn't bring
up his history with their company and ask once more for the
tailoring to be free.

The final point he made at the end of the story is that there is
ALWAYS SOMETHING YOU CAN DO, no matter what you are
trying and failing at. Maybe some website tests failed, an interview failed, or a client pitch failed. While there are always
outside factors you can point to as to why it didn't work out for you, they are not as important as rooting around and
REALLY digging for the small things you could have done...but didn't.

This article by Derek Sivers that was posted today is especially timely as well to crystallize the point:

http://sivers.org/my-fault

RBT Brunch with Ramit Sethi 20

Alec Barron

Hey guys,

Just wanted to share how I've used 2 of the takeaways from brunch
with Ramit last weekend.

1. Eliminate 1 hour of low-leverage activity per week (See Kevin

Espiritu's write up on this here:https://www.facebook.com/groups/
433485266716181/permalink/453570981374276

I had my groceries delivered to me Thursday saving me 1 hour this

week. Delivery was free this time, and will be $7 next time. Buying
back an hour of my life is well worth it for $7. Additionally, I'm no
longer worrying about when I'll find time to go to the grocery store. I
used to honestly waste a lot of my cognitive resources on figuring out
when I had time to re-stock the fridge. Instead, I spent Thursday
worrying about much higher value things.

2. There is always something you can do (See Kevin's write up on this

here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/433485266716181/
permalink/453243381407036/

Last Sunday, I got brunch in Beverly Hills with my girlfriend. We parked

at 11AM on Beverly Drive, and my girlfriend looked at the meter to see
if we needed to pay anything. She told me it was free after 12PM. I trusted her, and paid the meter only until 12PM even
though we'd be in the area for a few hours. We came back at 2PM to find a $68 ticket on my windshield. She had
misread the meter. I could have got mad at her, but I didn't because I remembered what Ramit said the day before. I
hadn't taken the extra step to read the meter myself. Had I done that, I would've noticed she misread the meter and
avoided a ticket.

How can you all apply these 2 points to your own lives?

Cheers,
Alec

RBT Brunch with Ramit Sethi 21

Ben Philabaum

LA meetup thoughts and takeaways

Everyone has done a great job summarizing so far. Many of my takeaways are echoed in other write ups but I wanted to
bring up one thing that I don't believe there has been much discussion on here:

People who you think are ‘naturals’ at something most likely had to work really hard to get good enough to appear that
way. Instead of being jealous or thinking ‘They’re a natural, I could never be like that,’ carefully study their actions, words,
thoughts and movements so that you can learn from them.

One example we talked about as a group was storytelling. Some people are amazing storytellers. I think I’m horrible at it,
and from the nods around the table I could tell that many people at brunch felt the same way about themselves.

When I start to tell one I can see people's faces become disinterested. I can see them looking away, fidgeting with their
hands. It’s a horrible feeling.

But its a skill that has to be practiced to truly develop. But you don’t need to become a master and put in “10,000”
hours. Ramit says that the way to get started is to just practice having 10 stories in your 'story box' ready to pull out. You
don't have to be a master storyteller, you just have to have a few stories dialed in. My next steps from this are to identify
my 10 stories, write them out in detail and then practice telling them out-loud.

- So in short, don't get held back by the invisible script of "That person is a natural/gifted. I could never learn that, be like
that, do that."
- Also, if you aren't good at something or don't posses a skill you'd like, it's probably completely due to your lack of
effort. When thinking back to Ramit talking about storytelling at brunch, I recognized that I was a bad storyteller and had
known this for awhile. But up to that point, had done basically nothing to improve in that area. I just thought "Well I'm not
good at storytelling. Guess that's that." But what did Ramit do? He bought screenwriting books so he could study how
master screenwriters structure stories.

Are there any areas or skills you've known you lack in but consistently done nothing to improve upon?

Has the invisible script of not being a "natural" held you back from achieving or pursuing something?

Thanks guys,
Ben

RBT Brunch with Ramit Sethi 22

Tony Nguyen

Hey everybody,

Last week I had the wonderful opportunity to meet some fellow brain trusters as
well as Ramit. There have been some great posts of the meet up and I wanted to
share something I took away from it.

Ben and Julia have great topics about story telling and social interaction. Going
along with the theme of connecting with people, Ramit shared an outline on how
to run a smooth dinner as well as deliver immense value to everyone.

1. The dinner spends a significant amount of time on intros alone, about 4-5
minutes per person. This gives everyone a chance to talk about themselves
(which everyone loves to do) and informs everyone at the table who they are
dining with.

My takeaway from this is that everyone should have their life story in a 30 sec, 2
min, and 5 min version ready at any second.

2. Give permission for everyone to brag about something. Everyone loves to brag about something they've done, but it is
socially wrong to do it. As a host, give them permission to do so.

I love how Ramit incorporated concepts from Dale Carnegie's timeless "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by
allowing everyone the chance to talk about something they are proud of.

3. After intros, go around the table and ask the group if they would like to talk with anyone else at the table.

This is where the dinner delivers immense value. Here, Ramit and Michael Fishman are connecting people in the room
and allowing them to develop relationships that they otherwise wouldn't be able to.

4. These dinners are held at the same location where the restaurant already knows how these dinners are run. When to
bring out the food, how to take orders, when to deliver the check, and etc. It sounds like Ramit does everyone he can to
minimize distractions and place the focus of the dinner on the guests and making connections. Other logistics include
covering the cost of the meal, which is a nice surprise to the guests.

Hope this was helpful. It was truly a pleasure to be in the company of such great people.

RBT Brunch with Ramit Sethi 23