Show Notes
Who you follow online is more important than ever.
With the constant bombardment of differing opinions, it’s hard to tell what the truth is anymore, especially when it comes to business.
We all know the “gurus” who make it seem like they are running thriving businesses and living the exotic life, but it’s all a lie.
Ramit has been a steadfast leader in the personal finance and business arena for 10+ years and is someone we have learned a ton from.
In this podcast episode we chat about what we learned from Ramit over the past decade and what it was like to meet him in 2019.
We’re talking about:
- The three things you should stop doing so you can save time and grow your business
- How we wasted FIVE HOURS with one person and how you can avoid it too
- The exact step-by-step process we put in place to never get on a phone call or meeting with someone who isn’t qualified
If you’re a local business owner who wants to generate more qualified appointments online we created a free training to show you our proven three step process. Watch the training
Connect with us
Transcript
Aaron [00:00:00] Hey yall, welcome to another episode of The Marketing Natives, we have a really good episode for you. Christian and I are talking about three big things happening, especially whenever we met Ramit. We're talking about that a little bit. We're also talking about his book, How It's Impacted us. There are three things that we're going to cover in this podcast, and that is what is automation and how it can help you and your business grow. We're talking about hiring employees and giving freedom. And we're talking about systems and how you should have them in place and what types of systems you should have to help your business grow, enjoy.
Narrator [00:00:32] This is the Marketing Natives, providing actionable ways to grow, improve and succeed in your business and now your hosts Christian and Aaron.
Christian [00:00:47] So how did you meet, not meet Ramit. How did you get introduced to Ramit and his books?
Aaron [00:00:55] Happenstance. I don't know if I told you that or not, but was it actually in Dallas or at Firewheel? And I was with Brianna one time before the night my flight left, went to Barnes Noble and it was just browsing around personal finance and like business books and entrepreneurship. And like his books called I'll Teach You to Be Rich. I was like, Oh, I want very I'll get your title right. And then you go through it. I was like, okay, this is just some kind of get rich quick scheme kind of crap, basically. And I went through there, I was like, wow, this is actually pretty good. I think the book goes like ten bucks. So I bought it and then I read like half of it on the plane. And then I was kind of like, oh, look, at that point, I don't even think I subscribe to his e-mail list or whatever else. But I just started reading the book. I don't know.
Narrator [00:01:39] Did so did you introduce me to him?
Aaron [00:01:41] Yeah, I think I told you like hey buy his book. Really good. And then we were kind of like going back and forth with it, because I think you are going through it like in 2010, just give a timeframe like it was around 2010. At that point, too, right?
Christian [00:01:55] I believe so. Yeah. Yeah, and I think the other one that just pops in my head is like the Tim Ferriss or our work week. Yeah, I feel like those two books were kind of simultaneously like. Yeah, traduce around the same time period. Yes. But yeah. And I think. Yeah. Go back to Ramita book. Yes. Very practical like things that you can do to potentially, you know, get rich. Right. Right. Have that rich lower.
Aaron [00:02:23] What would your quote unquote rich life is. Which we'll talk about later.
Christian [00:02:26] Exactly. So yeah. And we actually from reading his books, we. Went to Austin at some point. Was that last year 2019?
Aaron [00:02:37] Yeah. June of twenty nineteen. And we went there because this is like the ten year reunion of, like, the book. So I think it came on the nine. And then we start reading in 2010. But then he did another tour and he doesn't do speaking engagements. So it's kind of cool. Yeah. We drove down to Austin.
Christian [00:02:52] So he was doing a block a book signing. Same book. Just like you said, it's just a little bit updated. Right. On certain things, especially like he's big on credit cards. Right, though. Definitely some updated credit card things and bank account.
Aaron [00:03:05] Don't do this bank because I think on there I told you, like, get an I n g a direct account and then, like, does doesn't exist. Doesn't exist. Yeah. So we update it. And then there's like more realistic things to like, hey, a wedding ring or a wedding doesn't cost as much anymore. It costs this much in. So it's expanded a little bit, but I think it's pretty good. I read it last summer. I'm just going to the pool every day and reading that. And it was really good. But yeah, I think the trip down there was a lot of fun, too, just because we tried a new service called Bon Lane and got to work on the way down there. So it was, quote unquote a business write off, whereas 10 years ago we were like in college, which was weird, I guess.
Christian [00:03:42] We actually got to meet him. So we got to meet me. And hopefully we use that picture for the thumbnail. Yeah.
Christian [00:03:49] Yeah. No, that was does pretty cool. We. What was the name of the bookstore.
Aaron [00:03:54] Yes. It was a cool name. It was cool name. And they were like you're old school kind of like bookstore that did book signings or whatever. Wasn't a Barnes and Noble. Right. Yeah. I can't remember what it was but Chata. We'll figure out maybe.
Christian/Aaron [00:04:07] Yeah. But he was very close knit or felt like it. At least we were like front row weren't we. Yeah. Yeah. We got there early. We're like yes we're gonna leave in the morning. Front lines. Yes.
Christian [00:04:17] Pretty good. See. Yeah. Though. Anyways, that's a little bit of the backstory of how we started reading his books and then sending out his newsletter, which yeah, I'm also thanon on and get a lot of stuff from him.
Christian [00:04:31] And then he also has a lot of good courses. Yeah.
Christian [00:04:34] Like a lot of good courses for entrepreneurship or copywriting or earning side hustle money. Yeah. I mean everything. Anything.
Christian [00:04:46] Now, everything, anything but usually business or finance related, how to make more money and then, yeah, eventually getting to actually meet him in person, which is pretty cool. So throughout this whole process from when we actually got a hold of who is remeet Guy Robinson now to have in this business.
Christian [00:05:05] There are definitely some things that we've learned right from him from consuming so much of his content. You want to go, number one?
Aaron [00:05:14] Yeah, let's do number one. This is I think it takes the human emotion out of things, and that's automation before. In 2010, I never really thought about as like, oh, yeah, you do your budget. You just manually do things. And he's like, no, we're humans. Like, if you get six hundred dollars, a Christian gets six hundred dollars in his account, he's gonna be like, oh well three hundred for me. And then like two hundred for savings and then one hundred for something else like versus an automation where it's like OK every month. No matter what this money gets taken out. And if you don't see it, you don't have to worry about it. Like it's just it's already doing it. And I think he was one of the first early adapters for, like, the common person to do automation. I feel like, quote unquote, rich people were already doing this type of thing. And he's just kind of brought it down to other people. And for our business, it's taught us like not only just to automate money or savings or anything like that, but more so if we're doing something over and over again, how can we automate it? And that doesn't mean necessarily, I guess a a machine could be a person, but it's taught us that. OK, let's get this. And if we let's not continue to do the same thing over and over again and put human emotion to it because it just takes time. And that's one of his biggest things that he's talking about, is if you could get rid of the wasted time and have something else and do it for you. Why would you not?
Christian [00:06:33] Right. I think it's kind of funny. You mention like. He was talking about that 10 years ago. But I think. In a span of 10 years, automation has become more and more prevalent thanks to bots and algorithms and different things that tool like zappy. Yeah.
Christian [00:06:53] The technology has caught up to where normal people can benefit from automation's, right? Right. I think back then. There was baby automation's. But I think the true power of the automation's were virtual assistants are still having that human contact. And there were, you know, perhaps like, yeah, there's automating stuff.
Christian [00:07:13] I had to pay virtual assistants, too. Oh, he he doesn't like a lot of.
Christian [00:07:18] Booking of airplanes and then hotels and rent. He has a virtual assistants also get him like his favorite food delivered to the hotel at the exact time that he's going to get there. So he has a lot a lot of a lot of nuances and automation's. Right. That were possible because of virtual assistants or regular assistants or whatever. But I think now. Yeah. With. Yeah. Tools like zappier and messenger messenger bots like this and that. It's possible for regular people, business owners to use the power automation inexpensively to.
Christian [00:07:51] Yeah. Inexpensively to a lot of different things on there. Right.
Christian [00:07:55] So it can be from lead generation to actual even marketing. Like there's a company that FAMM for Shopify.
Aaron [00:08:04] Oh yeah.
Christian [00:08:04] Where it literally makes you the e-mails that get sent automatically subscribers. And you don't have to like lift a finger.
Aaron [00:08:12] Right. It pulls all of your data from like Instagram and Facebook and then says, like, this is the way you talk. Let me create this email and I'll send it to the time that your users are like awake and open already. Like crazy.
Christian [00:08:25] Yeah. Though. Yeah, absolutely. I think automation was one of the first things that we saw from remeet.
Christian [00:08:32] And I think actually Tim Faries, a big advocate to using assistance and automating things, nothing. At that same point in time, we were looking at all these things and saying like, oh my gosh, you know, we need to automate everything. But at the time were so small there, there's really not much we can automate. It's like now, you know, you're for your five. We're like, we are.
Christian [00:08:57] You know, we've had that idea in our heads for a long time, and it's just a matter of like, OK, now we we have the processes and what are the things that we can implement as far as not implement the army. And that's, I think, all going back to, like you're saying, like Rummy introducing us to just the possibility.
Aaron [00:09:16] Yeah. Yeah.
Aaron [00:09:18] All right. Number two, spending on and he's big on the rich life. So if you read the book or you've heard of remeet at all, it's like he's not necessarily saying you have to be rich. It's just whatever your rich life is. But doing those things and not feeling guilty about it. So, like, no one was automation because you automate you can save time or you can spend money on things that you want. And he gives a lot of examples about friends who spend 30 or 40 thousand dollars a year eating out. They don't spend on a bunch of other stuff, but that's their rich life. And so we've used it. I mean, I've used it personally, but also just understanding what we can spend money on for the businesses. We spend a lot of money. As I was calculating in the last couple weeks on technology, like we're a technology company, we love things. I think for a while Christian like put handcuffs on me to, like, stop buying apps, human apps or like technology tools, like all, you know, every single week there would be something that's like, oh, this is amazing, lost by technology. So for us, I guess part of the rich life is like having up to date, like, really good technology, whether it's our project management system or CRM. All of our technology is like really, really nice. And that's like a, you know, an agency necessity. But we could go the free route for most things. But we've recently had to upgrade a lot of stuff. But that's kind of our rich life. Does this make our life easier, I guess?
Christian/Aaron [00:10:38] I think also education is something that we spend a lot of money, but a lot of money on education. And whenever there is a good or so or something that's out there that we know is going to benefit us and we can see their return just by reading about the course, then we usually jump on it.
Christian [00:10:56] And it's a pretty easy decision for us to make. And again, I think we see the value in it. And like you're saying, it's like. It's what we consider rich or empowering. Right. For a company, right? I think it's very easy for us to spend money on on education.
Aaron [00:11:14] That's funny, because it came across like I think remits, like, quoted her saying like it. If you think a book is going to be good or whatever, don't just second guess it. Just buy the book because v at one idea from it, then it could change your life. And I think for us it wasn't necessarily the book, it was the course. And if you will look at us like, oh, you guys, you know, maybe we don't spend extravagantly on some things, but we do spend extravagantly on courses like I mean, I know how much we've spent this year. But I mean, probably five to ten thousand dollars on just courses, which may not be a lot for some people, but for us, I mean, a good chunk of change to spend on a course. And it's not really a second. Like, whatever. We're purchasing something I don't feel like buyer's remorse or like guilty about. I'm like, oh, like we bought Ryan an email course. If he uses it for all of our e-commerce clients, then it's going to be so much better. And even though we paid five hundred dollars for it or whatever else, it's like it's going to pay its dividend. So we just don't feel guilty about the rewards on it.
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Christian/Aaron [00:12:49] Number three. Number three, eyer and give them freedom to be autonomous.
Aaron [00:12:56] Yeah, that's tough, but he I mean, he's really good at that. I think that's something we're trying to lean towards. Because I think we're such it is companies like, what, ten over 10 years old. So, like here he has all the structures and things in place. And so this is for those of you who have been around for like 10 years, you can do something like that. We're still kind of. And maybe you're like us still molding like where the boundaries are on the company. And so we can hire and give autonomy to an extent. But we're like, well, we've never done this before.
Aaron [00:13:30] So let's bring you back in and let's paint the line of like where the the wall is. And then after that, once we have it, then I think that it's allowing them to be at times like. OK. You run it like this is the way we want to do things. Do it your own way and play around, have fun, do things. But don't be afraid to draw outside the lines. But we needed to start establish what this is going to, you know, are going to look like. And we're still doing that. I think that's the big thing.
Christian [00:13:54] Yeah, well, I feel like. Prefer starting out with the new company. You have to figure out your process, right?
Christian [00:14:01] And I think that's something that from the get go, we've had some sort of process or step or one, two, three.
Christian [00:14:07] But I think now is when we are actually, again, implementing education and the technology. Right. And just injecting into this process, that's going to make things a lot easier for everyone. And like you're saying, once we have this this process sort of. Cemented a little bit more than it's it's easy to say, OK, look, this is the process. This is the one through Z. This is some examples previously. This is does acknowledge that we use. It's a lot easier to sort of step out is, you know, that that process is just a well oiled machine. It runs pretty good. We've tested it. I mean, it's an excellent process. Right. So I think that in order to have that, they have that world machine, like, we have to go through that well machine. Right. And have to go through the trials and tribulations of which most people think are going down.
Aaron [00:15:06] Like, I don't know, like what is the word like. You can just set it up and then not have to do it yourself. Like, you can't not build a Web site and then tell people like as Christian as the designer, go build me a site, even though I don't know. Like, I don't know how to build a site. Like, I don't think it's possible. Yeah, I don't think so either.
Christian [00:15:25] I mean, it has to be. Yeah. You either have to go through it or you have to have the experience of that process or maybe you go through it as a consumer.
Christian [00:15:35] Right. To understand each step of the process, because otherwise it's hard to. Yeah. Give autonomy to someone when you don't know exactly what they're supposed to be doing.
Aaron [00:15:45] All right. I go run in this direction here like. Oh, hopes. That was the wrong direction. And I don't know. I feel like there's a difference between autonomy and, like, craziness, and they may just feel like, OK. I don't know if I'm doing things right or if I'm doing things wrong because they just being autonomous doesn't necessarily mean you have free reign to do whatever. But they also don't know where their, you know, their boundaries are like. Oh, I thought you said you want to do a video. Well, or a Web site. There's a lot of different ways to make a website, a lot of different ways to do a video. So getting back to his point of like hiring, giving them freedom is did basically not the micromanaging thing. Like we're not gonna show Jack like this is the way you have to edit the video. This is the outcome we want. You can do it whatever way you'd like, but that's something that we're getting better at. And once we've established a little bit more, I think we can give even more freedom. And we've I would say this year has been a big year for us to like let us let more things off of our plate to try to give to people and like, OK, it's not a hundred percent, but 80 is good enough. Anything just kind of rolling with it.
Christian [00:16:49] Though, number four.
Aaron [00:16:52] Quatro, knowing your numbers. All right. So this is ridiculously important and there's something the Christian brought up. We started doing this this year like we had of our, let's say, financial numbers. Like we know those numbers, like how much we make each week, how much we spend, where we spent money on especially big purchases. And, you know, each quarter we try to eliminate costs that are dumb or change things to annually whatever. So we're good there. But we didn't know, like our KPI is are our key performance indicators for like how many people's e-mails that we collect this week? How many Facebook followers do we have now? How many people did we get on YouTube? Our subscribers, we get on YouTube, those numbers. We didn't have a clue. We're like, oh, look, it's going up versus tracking it because we don't know if it's working or not. And that's really like a big push that Christian had was like, let's I want to know these numbers. They're kind of cool to know and they're good to see and good to see our progress. And we can make adjustments at that point.
Christian [00:17:48] Yeah. So I think numbers. This is not the financial but also. Yeah. Like growth in the company and seen, you know, if doing micro content on YouTube is helping or hurting, you know, we didn't have any historical data on. I mean, we do if we just start looking back and that, you know, you can elect to but wouldn't have a central place where we had all this data and these numbers where we make better decisions in the future as well. And even the president, because we know exactly what's going on on a week by week basis.
Aaron [00:18:19] Right. And we kind of review. And then another good thing, too, is this is not necessarily from remeet, but like we review at least a overview of that with everybody in the team so they can see how this is what's going on. Hey, our e-mails are growing. Everything's moving forward. So I think that's just the biggest thing in there. Everybody needs to know their numbers. Your numbers may be different than ours as far as what you track, but know your most important numbers in your business. And even if it's just a simple spreadsheet like ours is or like a simple task inside of your project management system, have something to continue to keep track of those numbers.
Christian [00:18:57] And then number five, negotiate when possible. And then. Oh, yeah. Painful.
Christian [00:19:05] You get discount now, something that I think when we started or we're thinking about starting proper first revan traction, we started doing that. We're we're OK.
Christian [00:19:16] We're using this technology for the foreseeable future. Let's purchase it for the whole year. And, you know, we get a discount off of that.
Aaron [00:19:24] Usually it's like 20 or 30 percent. Like, it's not just a year saved a dollar a month. It's like a lot. Yeah, it was a remeet.
Christian [00:19:31] Has a lot of examples in his book. Negotiating your salary is negotiating carbines, negotiating credit card fees. Though he does give a lot of advice and he's very frugal. But it's just like, you know, just being smart. Yeah. If you don't ask, you're never going to get anything right.
Aaron [00:19:50] He's Indian, too. So if you know anything about, like historically, like Indian people, they always are like trying to get the best deal, which I think that's where he came up with, like some of those ideas, like he grew up. I guess the backstory where he grew up, like haggling with people because I was his dad, like his dad would go to places and like you do, you clearly can't haggle with somebody at a Wal-Mart. But like I mean, they do that kind of stuff for whatever reason.
Christian [00:20:16] Yeah, I think we I mean, we've used that in our business as well. Anytime.
Christian [00:20:20] Like I said, for technology that we know that we're gonna use for the whole year, we purchase it for the whole year and get a discount there. And I think you've you've also asked just we asked for discount.
Aaron [00:20:31] Yeah. It's a fun thing. And we they usually get it like one of them, again, is app humor. Huge shout out to them. They've been amazing. But yeah, depending on what it is, we ask for discounts. And then also if we can't get a discount, how do we promote your products a lot. We're an affiliate like here. Give us a link and we'll get 10 percent of everything that we sell to selling. Is there a way that we can do that? Funny thing is the negotiate part. Hopefully within the next month or two we'll be able to get a car. I'm gonna go back to Remeet book hidden personally and we like, all right, I'm going to find these three places to find a car and I'm really going to document it because I think it'd be interesting to talk about like.
Aaron [00:21:10] All right. This is how about a car in cash and how I negotiated it and how we didn't go to any car lot. I learned all that from remeet, which is pretty cool. And the same thing for us in the future, if we ever bought company cars or something like we don't have the time to go now, we'd be kind of cool and be like go to a Tesla a lot and have a lot. Where does it go to the mall or something like that? Yeah, that's the store. Yeah. So I think it'd be different to buy a Tesla. So maybe this wouldn't work. Maybe Roominess updated for Tesla, but yeah, it's definitely negotiating at all costs at all possible when it is possible.
Christian [00:21:45] You mentioned Apsley and Noah Kagan is the co-founder. Right. So I don't know if he's easy. He's a.
Aaron [00:21:52] Yeah, he's a. No, he's not CEO. He's like a co founder. But I think he's an operations guy. But technically is a business partner. Chad kind of runs stuff.
Christian [00:22:02] But. Even more watching a video of him just saying that, like, you just need to ask for discount, like any time and get a chance. And he went to a place it was a quick I think it was an Instagram video. And we went to like a coffee place or that's his challenge. And he was like, can I get a 10 percent discount? And the logo was like, why use like. Just because I don't think he got it that time, but he's done other videos where. Like. OK. Yes, sure I need a dollar off.
Aaron [00:22:32] And that's like. Why not? I think for him it like he said, he's got the money. So it's not about that. So it's like for you as a business owner or entrepreneur, it's about just getting that. Yes. So that no cause like working that muscle. So it's like, can I have a discount? They say, yes. Great. You got something out of it. But regardless, you went over the hurdle of the fear. Somebody people like like especially in America, it's like this is the price. Nobody haggles with price except for us for whatever reason. Oh, can you lower the cost of that Web site or can you lower the cost of that logo or, you know, how can I work with you like they do that, like nobody would ever do that to target like those big companies. They want to they want to pay full price for target, but they want a discount like small business. But now I think that's a really cool strategy and way to kind of work that muscle. It's fun. I should do that with Brianna and then film. It would be interesting to see them do it. I would I would have no problem doing like just this issue of struggle. Yeah, I think so. I'd just more like hi like and they're like all hi and like can I have a discount? And like I just think you would take a lot of work for her to like not necessarily say it at that time, but just to kind of like walk up there and like. Right. People are behind me and then you're asking like people are seeing you do it. The hard one would be just like set him up to fail, like going to like Starbucks where, you know, it's not as easy to do something like that versus like a local coffee shop. Guys, thank you so much for listening. Another episode of the marketing natives. We've got a lot out of this. Please go make sure to check out Remeet. He is amazing. His book is amazing. I was actually put it at Link in here in the shownotes were not affiliates, just really big advocates for him. If you've been listening for a while, please make sure that you go ahead and leave us an honest rating and review on Apple podcast. This helps us grow. And also, we'll give you a shout out on our podcasts here. Pretty cool to hear your name come across your headphones. And if you are listening for the first time, whether you're on YouTube, whether you on podcast, wherever you're watching this, please make sure that you subscribe so that you continue to see the content we put out every single week. We'll see you guys.
Narrator [00:24:34] The marketing native's podcast is a production of BitBranding.
