Everything was going fine in my life, and I was miserable.
Five years ago, I had a ‘fine’ job, but I craved a challenge – something I could be proud of. Slacking off at the office, I was browsing Hacker News (a technology-oriented version of Reddit), marveling at the fantastic things everybody ELSE was doing. I could see my future as a cog in the corporate machine, and it was not inspiring.
Ramit’s advice helped me truly level up. During one of those Hacker-News-Fueled ‘breaks’, I stumbled upon this financial blogger with marketing, business, and job-search advice. Despite the scammy-sounding title of his blog – “I will teach you to be Rich”, I found it very helpful and ended up taking the “Dream Job” course.
Fast forward five years, I work remotely for the best company I could ever dream of, making past me very proud. I travel the world with my wife, who also works remotely – thanks to Ramit’s advice. Our company even flew us to India to present at a conference. We never dreamt of going to India, let alone on the company’s dime. We went to a city known for one of the most luxurious hotels in India – in fact, Ramit went there on his honeymoon!
After taking Dream Job, I have attended Success Triggers, Delegate&Done, Mental Mastery and How to talk to anybody. I recommend each one of these courses. They deliver consistent, exceptional quality and are great lenses to organize your existing knowledge.
To answer the title question: Yes, he is legit. Any course you will choose will be the best one in the category.
“Ramit Sethi is very, very legit”
Tim Ferriss
The biggest value I get from these curriculums is what not to focus on at this moment. Ramit claims that he and the team spend the majority of the time on nailing the lesson plan and it really shows. In the world where information is abundant, this curation is the ultimate value.
Ramit is about the “Rich Life”
Yes, he is in the personal finance sphere. But instead of focusing on curbing spending, budgeting, power of compounding in investments – and all the other components of successful financial future, he focuses of the end goal – the Rich Life, whatever that means for you:
- Getting rid of credit card debt ( in the “I will teach you to be rich” book )
- Getting a better job ( in Dreamjob )
- Starting a business (in Earn1K and Zero to launch Courses)
- Negotiating a raise (in Dreamjob )
- Reclaiming your time (in “Delegate & Done” course about virtual assistants)
5 principles of Ramit
After reading Ramit’s content for years, I have teased out these underlying messages in all of his teachings:
Disproportionate results
By investing 10% more than others into preparation, research and figuring out the strategy, you can get 10x – 100x better results. This approach is applicable in job search (make connections first), building a business (nail down your target niche first), fitness, dating and other areas of Rich Life.
Strategies, not tactics
The Internet loves gimmicks and listicles like “10 apps to polish your resume, 20 online marketplaces for creators.”. But these are tactics. The important things to internalize are the strategies that help us understand “game being played around us”. Not frantic tactics that will be useless after a year.
Focus on the big wins
You can focus on saving a few hundred bucks a year by cutting back on lattes, or you can get a 30 000 dollar raise. Nuff said. Click here if you want to read one of Ramit’s classic rants on ‘cut back on lattes’.
Psychology is key
The best advice is the one you take and follow-through. Ramit understands that and optimizes his courses, emails, and tips to make help you follow-through. They are not stuffed with every conceivable piece of information on the topic, but meticulously designed to make you succeed. That being said, his courses include “Vaults” that have 10x the amount of tips and tactics as the main material. But as I mentioned, the tactics are never the focus.
Test relentlessly
Do stuff that works. Take a hard look at what doesn’t. Don’t try to make yourself feel better by confusing the two.
Get his advice for free
Ramit frequently claims that 95% of his advice is free. I don’t think this is accurate. I found that he shared 305% of his advice for free. But you still should take his courses, because they put everything in place.
I would recommend the following path to take advantage of this plethora of resources:
Step 1:Check his Instagram.
It’s hilarious. It’s also a good test if Ramit ‘resonates’ with you.
Step 2: Tim Ferriss interview.
Tim is a world-class interviewer and they are friends.
Step 3: Briefcase technique
The technique illustrates all the principles I laid out above and helped me get my job.
Bonus round: Ultimate guides
Following that, I recommend his free “ultimate guides”:
- The ultimate guide to making money
- Guide to finding your dream job
- The ultimate guide to starting an online business
“How much should a man spend on an engagement ring?” is a fascinating example of Ramit diving into an area populated with generic advice and actually providing an exceptional answer. This is my gold standard on what a blog post should look like.
A note about joining Ramit courses.
The only way to join Ramit Courses is to sign up for his email list. There is a public page with all the products he sells, but they are only “open” one at a time.
Sign up to his email list. You don’t have to pay him a dime, but you will get tremendous value out of the emails. They are packed with knowledge.
And I do recommend the courses.
Ramit’s vision of Rich Life has rubbed on me a little bit. Even though he does not sell anything in the space, he convinced me to get a personal trainer, cleaning help for our apartment and I even have a personal VA.
Past me would marvel at a life I built.
And if you want to hear in detail what I learned, and how I adapted Ramit’s advice to suit the Remote work environment – sign up for MY email list. ?