IWillTeachYouToBeRich - “I wish I learned this stuff sooner”

Reader,

After the first edition of my book, I Will Teach You to Be Rich, became a New York Times bestseller, I went on a tour to meet readers around the country.

San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Denver -- no matter where I went -- I heard two comments over and over again.

One of them was, “Ramit, just so you know, the interest rates in your book are wrong.”

YES. I KNOW.

That’s because interest rates change.

But the second comment was more profound. People told me, “Wow, I wish I learned about this stuff sooner.”

Think about this. To this guy, learning about automating his finances, investing, and saving is potentially worth millions over his life.

What things do you wish you learned sooner?

I can tell you mine:

How to think like a child
I used to be hardcore about tactics: Email marketing, webinar conversion rates, copywriting headline hacks, viral loops, etc.

Only later did I learn that being playful (like a child) is a valuable skill.

When you see a kid in the park, they’re not looking at a slide and thinking, “I have a lot of internal fears about this slide. I don’t want to go down it and look like an imposter slider.”

And they’re not thinking about how much less experience they have compared to a ten-year-old. They just slide down it and see what happens. They’re playing. After one or two rides, they might try using their arms to propel them forward faster. This curiosity and playful attitude is how they learn.

But as we age, we lose this mindset.

I fight viciously to keep it. If I see a business doing something ridiculous, I don’t automatically assume they’re dumb. I try to figure out what they know that I don’t.

For example, HBO didn’t let people buy individual episodes for years. Instead of thinking they don’t “get it,” I explored the idea like a child.

This mindset has led to some of my business breakthroughs.

How to write effective emails
I don’t mean marketing emails. I’m talking about the emails we send every day. Everybody loves hacks to achieve Inbox Zero. I shared a bunch yesterday. But is that the real goal?

I see email as a tool. Whether you want to reach out to a VIP, schedule meetings, or keep in touch with old contacts, writing emails that get you everything you want -- smoothly and quickly -- is a game changer in this new era of mass remote working and social distancing.

(By the way, I can show you how to do all of these right here.)

I wish I had learned about writing emails earlier. It would have saved me from thousands of hours of aggravation, and dozens and dozens of missed opportunities.

For example, have you ever opened up a draft and stared at a blinking cursor for 15 minutes trying to think of what to write? Or the worst is when you ask someone two questions in an email, and the other person responds to one, but not the other. Ugh!

So when I look at my inbox, I see hundreds of tiny annoyances that can destroy my productivity. It took me years, and thousands of tests, but I developed a set of email scripts and strategies that get me what I need, in the easiest way possible.